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BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD: A FIRST LOOK

AT LESSONS LEARNED FROM KATRINA

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

SEPTEMBER 15, 2005

Serial No. 109–85

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

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Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Staff Director

DAVID MARIN, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on September 15, 2005 ..................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Harrald, John R., professor of engineering management, George Washington University and director, Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk

Management; and James J. Carafano, senior fellow for national security and homeland security, Heritage Foundation ..................................... 210

Carafano, James J. .................................................................................... 216

Harrald, John R. ........................................................................................ 210

Perett, Constance, administrator, Office of Emergency Management,

County of Los Angeles, CA; Ellis Stanley, general manager, Emergency

Preparedness Department, city of Los Angeles, CA; Robert C. Bobb,

city administrator, District of Columbia; David J. Robertson, executive

director, Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments; Tony Carper, Jr., director, Broward Emergency Management Agency, Broward

County, FL; Chief Carlos Castillo, director, Miami-Dade County Office

of Emergency Management, Miami-Dade County, FL; and Marc Morial,

president and chief executive officer, National Urban League, Inc.,

former mayor of New Orleans, LA .............................................................. 105

Bobb, Robert C. .......................................................................................... 125

Carper, Tony, Jr. ....................................................................................... 156

Castillo, Chief Carlos ................................................................................ 169

Morial, Marc .............................................................................................. 180

Perett, Constance ...................................................................................... 105

Robertson, David J. ................................................................................... 145

Stanley, Ellis .............................................................................................. 116

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Bobb, Robert C., city administrator, District of Columbia, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 127

Carafano, James J., senior fellow for national security and homeland

security, Heritage Foundation, prepared statement of .............................. 219

Carper, Tony, Jr., director, Broward Emergency Management Agency,

Broward County, FL, prepared statement of .............................................. 158

Castillo, Chief Carlos, director, Miami-Dade County Office of Emergency

Management, Miami-Dade County, FL, prepared statement of ............... 172

Clay, Hon. Wm. Lacy, a Representative in Congress from the State of

Missouri, prepared statement of .................................................................. 87

Cummings, Hon. Elijah E., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Maryland, prepared statement of ............................................................ 103

Davis, Chairman Tom, a Representative in Congress from the State of

Virginia, prepared statement of ................................................................... 5

Harrald, John R., professor of engineering management, George Washington University and director, Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk

Management, prepared statement of .......................................................... 213

Issa, Hon. Darrell E., a Representative in Congress from the State of

California, prepared statement of ................................................................ 45

Maloney, Hon. Carolyn B., a Representative in Congress from the State

of New York:

Article dated September 15, 2005 ............................................................ 248

Information concerning lessons learned .................................................. 48

Memo dated August 30, 2005 ................................................................... 245

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 64

Miller, Hon. Candice S., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Michigan, prepared statement of ............................................................. 253

Page

IV

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by—Continued

Morial, Marc, president and chief executive officer, National Urban

League, Inc., former mayor of New Orleans, LA , prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 182

Perett, Constance, administrator, Office of Emergency Management,

County of Los Angeles, CA, prepared statement of ................................... 108

Robertson, David J., executive director, Metropolitan Washington Council

of Governments, prepared statement of ...................................................... 147

Ros-Lehtinen, Hon. Ileana, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Florida, prepared statement of ................................................................ 76

Sanders, Hon. Bernard, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Vermont, prepared statement of .............................................................. 36

Shaw, Hon. E. Clay, a Representative in Congress from the State of

Florida, prepared statement of .................................................................... 96

Shays, Hon. Christopher, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Connecticut:

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 32

Prepared statement of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals ......................................................................................................... 198

Stanley, Ellis, general manager, Emergency Preparedness Department,

city of Los Angeles, CA, prepared statement of ......................................... 118

Watson, Hon. Diane E., a Representative in Congress from the State

of California, prepared statement of ........................................................... 79

Waxman, Hon. Henry A., a Representative in Congress from the State

of California:

Catastrophic plan ...................................................................................... 10

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 25

(1)

BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD: A FIRST

LOOK AT LESSONS LEARNED FROM KATRINA

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2005,

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, Washington, DC.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Tom Davis (chairman

of the committee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Davis of Virginia, Shays, Ros-Lehtinen,

Gutknecht, Souder, Platts, Duncan, Turner, Issa, Brown-Waite,

Porter, Marchant, Westmoreland, Dent, Foxx, Waxman, Owens,

Sanders, Maloney, Cummings, Kucinich, Davis of Illinois, Clay,

Watson, Lynch, Van Hollen, Ruppersberger, Higgins, and Norton.

Also present: Representative Shaw.

Staff present: Melissa Wojciak, staff director; David Marin, deputy staff director/communications director; Jennifer Safavian, chief

counsel for oversight and investigations; John Hunter, counsel; Rob

White, press secretary; Drew Crockett, deputy director of communications; Grace Washbourne, Shalley Kim, and Mindy Walker,

professional staff members; Teresa Austin, chief clerk; Sarah

D’Orsie, deputy clerk; Jay O’Callahan, research specialist; Phil

Schiliro, minority chief of staff; Phil Barnett, minority staff director/chief counsel; Kristin Amerling, minority general counsel;

Karen Lightfoot, minority communications director/senior policy advisor; Robin Appleberry, Jeff Baran, and Michael McCarthy, minority counsels; David Rapallo, minority chief investigative counsel;

Earley Green, minority chief clerk; and Jean Gosa, minority assistant clerk.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. The committee will come to order.

Welcome to today’s hearing, which marks this committee’s first

look at lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina.

Two months ago former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich testified before our Federal Workforce Subcommittee about the need

to move the Government to an ‘‘entrepreneurial’’ model and away

from its current ‘‘bureaucratic’’ model so that we can get Government to move at the speed and effectiveness of the Information

Age. ‘‘Implementing policy effectively,’’ he said, ‘‘is ultimately as

important as making the right policy.’’ Indeed, a policy that can’t

be implemented effectively is no policy at all.

We are here today because, in the tragic aftermath of Katrina,

we are again confronted with the vast divide between policy creation and policy implementation. Confronted with the life-anddeath difference between theory and practice. Confronted with the

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daunting challenge, as some of our witnesses will discuss this

morning, of understanding that we both did things wrong and did

wrong things.

We have all spent much of the past 2 weeks examining the aftermath of the catastrophic disaster. It has become increasingly clear

that local, State, and Federal Government agencies failed to meet

the needs of the residents of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

Now it is our job to figure out why, and to make sure we are better

prepared for the future.

First and foremost, our thoughts and prayers go out to the hurricane’s victims, their families, their friends. The loss of life, property, livelihoods, pets, and dreams have been enormous. And we salute all Americans who have stepped up to the plate in any way

that they can.

At this stage, we agree we need to conduct our oversight in a

manner that does not interfere with the rescue and relief efforts.

We agree that many questions need to wait. No one wants to take

people away from the massive job at hand.

But I also think some issues can and should be looked at right

now. Our Members want to begin doing oversight, and the American people are demanding it as well.

We can begin contributing to the dialog this morning by looking

at the emergency plans in other major metropolitan areas—places

that potentially face, and in fact have faced, similar catastrophic

events, natural or manmade. This review serves two purposes: it

can help make sure others are better prepared, and it can guide

and inform the subsequent work we will be doing specific to

Katrina.

Whatever the threat, Katrina has forced officials across America

to take another look at disaster plans that may not be as solid as

they previously thought. This process of reevaluation will be the

focus of the committee’s first post-Katrina hearing. Later, when it

is appropriate, we can turn to the myriad of other questions that

are literally begging for answers.

This is not the time to attack or defend government entities for

political purposes. This is the time to do the oversight we are

charged with doing. Our goal should be to investigate aggressively

what went wrong and what went right. We will do it by the book

and let the chips fall where they may.

It is hard not to point fingers and assign blame in the aftermath

of this tragedy. I understand human nature, and I understand politics. But I think most Americans want less carping and more compassion. And I think most Americans want a rational, thoughtful,

bipartisan review of what went wrong and what went right. I think

most Americans want to know that we will be better prepared the

next time. They need that assurance.

In his letter to me last week requesting hearings, the committee’s ranking member, Mr. Waxman, raised many important questions that need to be addressed: whether FEMA has been organizationally undermined and underfunded; whether evaluation plans

were adequate; whether opportunities to better safeguard the New

Orleans levee system were missed; why relief and medical supplies

and support were seemingly slow in arriving; and several others.

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I think the letter also overlooked many other questions that also

need to be asked, and prematurely faulted the Federal Government

for all the shortcomings. In fact, local and State government failures weren’t mentioned.

That is also a part of our oversight review, because we are the

committee on federalism here, and the coordination between Federal, State, and local is a very critical component in implementing

any policy. We undoubtedly need to figure out why the evacuation

plans and emergency communication systems were woefully deficient. We don’t need to prematurely paint the picture that these

are solely or primarily the responsibility of one entity or the other.

And the worst lesson to be gleaned from this disaster is that all

answers to shortcomings in emergency preparedness can somehow

be found in Washington. But we can and should lead the way when

it comes to questions.

It remains difficult to understand how government could respond

ineffectively to a disaster that was predicted for years, and for

which specific dire warnings had been issued for days. If this is

what happens when we have advanced warning, I shudder to imagine the consequences when we do not. If ever there were a time for

leaders at all levels of government to come together and review and

coordinate their emergency plans, it is now.

So let us focus on the task at hand. Let us focus on how policy

implementation became so wildly divorced from policy creation.

On why there was such a depth of government hesitancy at all

levels.

On why we confuse getting the government ready with getting

people ready.

It is true and important to emphasize that Katrina’s scale and

scope were unprecedented.

But the cities and counties represented here today face the possibility of similar catastrophic events. In fact, they previously adjusted their plans in response to past hurricanes, earthquakes, terrorist attacks, and angry men on tractors. I am sure they have

begun adjusting again.

They are here today to discuss whether they are better prepared

than New Orleans, and why.

What triggers full-blown action and who do they talk to first?

Are they further along in developing clear and realistic evacuation plans that meet the needs of all residents? Will they hesitate

to issue mandatory evacuation orders? Is there an agreement on

what mandatory means?

Would they better be able to inform the public about what to do

and where to go?

Do they know who will communicate with whom, and are they

sure everyone will be speaking the same language?

Do they understand the weather advisories they get from forecasters?

Do they expect Federal officials to wait for specific requests, or

will they be able to gather the information needed to make them?

The questions are many and the answers are few. Today we

begin the process of clarifying failure and searching for improvement.

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Perhaps the biggest problem with Katrina is that many people

didn’t listen before the hurricane arrived, and communication was

impossible after. I hope we can start communicating more clearly

this morning.

[The prepared statement of Chairman Tom Davis follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. I would now recognize our distinguished

ranking member, who has also taken a lead in this and who I am

proud to work with on this, Mr. Waxman, for his opening statements.

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Hurricane Katrina was a disaster of monumental scope. It destroyed an American city and forced a million Americans from their

homes. The financial costs will be immense and the human costs

incalculable.

As the Nation confronts this disaster, we in the Congress have

two major challenges. First, and most important, we must care for

those who have been harmed and uprooted. They have been

through a horrible ordeal, and we need to provide assistance with

housing, medical care, and schooling, and we need to begin the

process of rebuilding.

Our second challenge is to find out how this could have happened. The committee recently received an extraordinary document. It is a FEMA document from May 2004, and it predicts that

a hurricane striking New Orleans could cause ‘‘a mega-disaster.’’

Over a year before Katrina, FEMA was predicting that a Category

4 hurricane could hit New Orleans, flood the city, and force a million people to evacuate.

FEMA recognized that such a hurricane would ‘‘create a catastrophe with which the State would not be able to cope without massive help.’’ The document then states: ‘‘The gravity of the situation

calls for an extraordinary level of advanced planning.’’

And I want to ask, Mr. Chairman, that this document be made

part of the record.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Without objection.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. WAXMAN. As this remarkable document shows, Katrina

wasn’t a surprise. This wasn’t a disaster that no one could have

predicted, as the President said. Over a year ago, FEMA new that

a Category 4 hurricane could cause a mega-disaster, that the State

was not prepared to cope without massive Federal intervention,

and that an extraordinary level of advanced planning was needed.

Yet, apparently, FEMA—and the rest of the Government—was

caught unprepared.

Now, Congress has a responsibility to find out why our Government failed so miserably, when the stakes for so many Americans

were so high.

There is a dispute in Congress about how to conduct an investigation. The House and Senate Republicans, their leadership, proposed a bicameral investigation committee. But they want Republicans to control the committee. And they didn’t consult with the

Democrats in developing the proposal. Now, the Democratic leadership is rightly skeptical and has proposed a truly independent commission.

As the principal oversight committee in the House, we on this

committee have an obligation to conduct our own independent investigation. And if we are serious about this, as the chairman indicated he is, there are two steps we should take right away.

First, we should request basic documents from the agencies. I

have given the chairman drafts of letters that should go to the Department of Homeland Security, the Corps of Engineers, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the White House,

that seek information that any credible investigation must have.

These letters ask basic questions, such as what was the plan for

responding to the hurricane and how was it implemented. I hope

that we will be able to announce today that we have reached a bipartisan agreement to proceed with these document requests.

Second, we need to hear from Michael Brown and Michael

Chertoff. These are the two Government officials most responsible

for the inadequate response, and the committee should call them

to testify without delay, and, if need be, subpoena them to come in.

Today’s hearing is entitled, ‘‘Back to the Drawing Board: A First

Look at Lessons Learned from Katrina.’’ Well, I look forward to

hearing the testimony from the witnesses today, a very distinguished group. The chairman has called you all together. And I especially want to hear from the people in Los Angeles. But I don’t

want to be so parochial that I only want to hear about Los Angeles.

But I must admit that I am perplexed by the timing of this hearing. It is going to be hard for D.C., Miami, and Los Angeles to learn

what lessons to draw from Katrina until we fulfill our obligation

to investigate the disaster in New Orleans and find out what went

wrong and why.

It is too early to know what the lessons of Katrina are, but it is

not too early to learn lessons from the waste, fraud, and abuse that

has characterized the reconstruction in Iraq and in the spending of

the Department of Homeland Security. Over the last 5 years, the

record of this administration’s handling of Federal contracts has

been one of persistent and costly mismanagement. Under the administration, the value of no-bid contracts have skyrocketed, oversight of Federal contracts have been turned over to private compaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:50 Jan 18, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24205.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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nies with blatant conflicts of interest, and when Government auditors and whistleblowers do flag abuses, their recommendations are

often ignored.

In Iraq, billions have been appropriated for the reconstruction effort, yet, oil and electricity production remain below pre-war levels.

Waste, fraud, and abuse by Halliburton and other contractors have

squandered hundreds of millions of taxpayers dollars, and domestically the record is no better: the FBI spent $170 million on a virtual case file system that does not work, the Department of Homeland Security spent another $200 million on a border monitoring

system of cameras and sensors that also doesn’t work, and the contract to hire Federal airport screeners has been plagued by poor

management and flagrant abuses.

As we prepare to pour billions into the relief and recovery effort

in the Gulf Coast, we cannot allow these mistakes to be repeated.

We need contracting reforms, and more and better oversight. The

taxpayer cannot afford to give another blank check.

One of the fundamental Constitutional obligations of Congress is

to oversee the executive branch. Despite the efforts of the chairman, who has asked more questions than most of his colleagues,

Congress has too often failed to conduct meaningful oversight, and

the consequences have been perilous. When we fail to insist on accountability, we reward blunders and we invite abuse.

We must not travel down this road again. As the entire Nation

now knows, Government incompetence and a failure to insist on accountability can have dire consequences.

I am pleased we are holding at least this hearing. We have to

do much more than this hearing. And I just hope that the Republican leadership in the Congress isn’t trying to set up a bicameral

commission to study and then a select committee that is on the

floor today and Republicans trying to control everything so that we

don’t really find out what is happening.

If there is ever a time for bipartisanship—and this committee

has demonstrated more than most committees along those lines—

the time is now. And if there is ever a committee that ought to be

doing its job, as our committee has done in the past, the time is

now as well.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Henry A. Waxman follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Waxman, thank you very much.

Mr. Shays.

Mr. SHAYS. Wow. If there ever was a time for bipartisanship, I

didn’t hear it in the last speech. The bottom line is, if you want

to be a partisan Democrat, you just focus on FEMA and what the

Department of Homeland Security should have done, and if you

want to be a partisan Republican, you just focus on the outrageous

failure on the State and local governments. And if you want to be

bipartisan, you focus on all of it.

My sense is that a bipartisan, bicameral committee—that will

probably have a fairer makeup than the Contra aid funding hearing—will do its job, and Congress can do its job. This committee

has been bipartisan and it has conducted investigations of this administration with vigor, and I salute the chairman for calling this

hearing.

Our fellow citizens in the Gulf States endured a horrific natural

disaster of unprecedented, but not unanticipated, magnitude. Hurricane Katrina destroyed so many lives. The storm also blew away

overconfident assumptions about post-September 11th preparedness and laid bare lethal inadequacies in response, planning, and

execution at all levels of government. We owe it to both victims and

survivors to salvage the hard lessons left in its wake.

In assessing response capabilities and vulnerabilities, it is essential to begin, as we do today, at the local level. That is where disasters happen, and that is where State and Federal help will have

to flow to support local first responders. That help has to get there

in time and on a scale to match the crisis.

So we need to know where else in the disaster response process

might the intergovernmental levees break to swamp untested plans

and unproven capabilities.

Yesterday, the 9/11 Commission pointedly and appropriately reminded us of the unfunded, unfinished agenda that, if addressed,

might have saved lives last month. Radio spectrum needed for

interoperability communication has not been made available. A

unified incident command system is not being used across all jurisdictions. We remain unprepared to protect critical infrastructure

because we haven’t decided what is critical. Without clear priorities, resources are apportioned based on politics and demographics,

rather than risk.

Oversight of security strategies at chemical plants and nuclear

facilities confirms a systemic weakness that brought tragic consequences in New Orleans. Many evacuation plans seem unrealistic

and, frankly, criminally negligent given the fragile condition and

constrained capacity of roads, bridges, and transportation systems,

and the public health system has almost no surge capacity. In fact,

as one of our colleagues wryly observed, most emergency rooms are

not prepared for the walk-ins on an average Saturday night, much

less a tsunami of the sick and worried well that would stream

through their doors in the event of biological attack or natural pandemic.

Nature sometimes gives warnings; terrorists will not. When the

crisis comes in the form of an undetected dirty bomb, a smuggled

improvised nuclear device, or a sudden disease outbreak, the lessons of Hurricane Katrina could save many thousands of lives if we

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heed them. A serious thorough post mortem of Katrina to glean

vital lessons begins with hearings like this, and, thank you, Chairman Davis, for having this hearing. I look forward to a frank and

constructive discussion.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:]

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Mr. WAXMAN. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. SHAYS. I yield.

Mr. WAXMAN. I was taken by surprise and disappointment by

your reaction to my statement. To raise questions and to make

statements of facts I don’t consider partisan.

Mr. SHAYS. Reclaiming my time. It all focused on the Federal

Government. Totally focused on the Federal Government. And we

are going to look at all three levels of government.

I yield back my time.

Mr. WAXMAN. Well, I agree that we need to do that. We need to

do that. And I didn’t focus just on the Federal Government, but we

have the major responsibility.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. We have a momentous task ahead of us,

and I appreciate everybody’s comments. We want to move ahead on

this, if we can.

Everybody’s statement will be put in the record. You will have

7 days to do that. We have time, for Members who want to say

something now, but we do have a time limit. We do have some people testifying that have time limits on this, as we get close. We

have former Mayor Morial of New Orleans here today. He has a

very tight time slot, so I will have to make arrangements, as we

get through, to accommodate them. But we will move ahead and

ask people to be as brief as you can. Your complete, entire statement will be included in the record.

Mr. Sanders, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. SANDERS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I would

hope that it goes without saying that there should be an independent September 11th-type commission to look at the problems that

surfaced at Hurricane Katrina. It is inconceivable not to support

that approach.

Thomas Keane, who is in fact the formal chairman of the 9/11

Commission, this is what he said just yesterday: ‘‘This is not a terrorist attack incident, but it brings into play all of the same issues

and shortcomings that we saw in September 11th. What makes you

mad is that it is the same things that we saw on September 11th.

Whoever is responsible for acting in these places hasn’t acted. Are

they going to do it now? What else has to happen for people to act?’’

In other words, what we are not just talking about is the tragedy

of Katrina; are we prepared for a terrorist attack? What have we

learned?

No. 2, when we talk about lessons learned, I would hope that we

all agree that when we are talking about emergency management,

when we are talking about saving lives, we want competence at the

top of the ladder. You don’t want somebody whose experience is

based on Arabian horses; you want somebody who knows something about how to save lives in an emergency.

Third, what we also need to know is that poverty in America is

a serious problem, and poverty in America is a growing problem.

And maybe it didn’t dawn on the White House, but somebody

should know when people live day to day and have no money, you

can’t get into a car because you don’t have a car; you can’t go to

a hotel because you don’t have money to go to a hotel. You don’t

have anything. You don’t have anything on any day, and you certainly don’t have it in the middle of a flood. So maybe we might

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want to pay attention to the fact that millions and millions of people in this country are barely surviving on a good day, and what

is going to happen to them in the midst of an emergency.

And maybe out of Hurricane Katrina might come an understanding that you can’t continue to ignore environmental degradation.

Global warming is real. We just passed an energy bill which is still

studying whether global warming is a problem, and the U.S. Government is one of the few institutions left in the world that doesn’t

understand that global warming is real. We are talking about the

destruction of wetlands, which played a very important role in

terms of the damage done due to Hurricane Katrina. We are talking about the rising of the sea level. And maybe we shouldn’t be

passing legislation which still does not understand that.

Hurricane Katrina was not only predictable, it was predicted.

Read Scientific American. Read the Times-Picayune of New Orleans. It was there for all to see. So the question is whether we are

going to be running policies on competence, on scientific basis, or

whether we are going to be running agencies based on cronyism

and ignoring reality?

So let me simply conclude. My friend from Connecticut indicated

that this committee has dealt with some of the important issues in

the last few years. I respectfully disagree. This committee has ignored many of the major problems that the American people want

answered. We are supposed to be doing oversight; in many ways we

haven’t. I would hope that Hurricane Katrina becomes a wake-up

call that there are huge issues in this country that have to be addressed. I hope this committee is serious about doing that.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Bernard Sanders follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Turner.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I join my colleagues in expressing my deepest

condolences to the families and friends of the victims of Hurricane

Katrina. I also join my colleagues in admiring the many acts of

bravery and selflessness of our citizens in helping those individuals

who have been impacted by Katrina.

I can understand why our Democratic counterparts continue to

call for an independent commission. It is because they can’t even

get through a congressional hearing without being partisan and us

hearing from individuals that have great information and expertise

for us.

The reason why we had a bipartisan independent commission in

September 11th is because the issues were much more complex

than just the manner of the Federal Government’s response. We

had questions such as who was responsible for September 11th,

how did they get here; what did they do when they were here before September 11th. These are not questions you have with a hurricane. We all watched it come. We know how it got here; we know

what it did.

The issues of what the Federal Government, local government

and State government’s response are to be is a function of government, and this committee and this Congress ought to have an ability to undertake that review, the acts of governance, without issues

of such high partisanship.

There have been problems and inadequacies in the response to

Hurricane Katrina, and it is important for us to understand what

went wrong and what went right. In order for this process to be

most effective, we must gather the facts in an unbiased, nonpartisan manner. The questions raised about our response to Hurricane Katrina are simply too important.

Mr. Chairman, as the former mayor of Dayton, OH and now

chairman of this committee’s Subcommittee on Federalism and the

Census, I am keenly aware of the many issues raised when Federal, State, and local entities are all involved in responding to a crisis situation. Our first responders are our mayors, police, fire, and

emergency personnel. State and Federal resources support initial

local efforts and are ultimately engaged when the task exceeds

local resources.

But let us be clear, the President of the United States is not responsible for evacuating our cities, whether it is Clinton, Bush,

Carter, or Reagan. To claim otherwise is wrong. Like all Americans, I was horrified to see the pictures of low-income and AfricanAmerican residents of New Orleans that were not evacuated before

the storm. They were not left behind by this President, this Congress, or our American people. The fact that our disaster response

was insufficient at the local, State, and Federal level is clear. Determining what we need to fix is our task.

Mr. Chairman, we need to work together to look at the issues of

bureaucracy, the barriers that did not allow relief aid and the

workers to do their jobs in the disaster areas. The bottom line is

that these hearings are about people and families, and saving

Americans’ lives in a disaster.

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I look forward to the testimony of each of our witnesses before

us today. I am particularly interested from our witnesses and how

they have addressed their plan of similar problems and what lessons they believe that we are already learning from Hurricane

Katrina.

Mr. Chairman, I commend you for holding this hearing today. By

working together as Members of Congress, by doing our jobs, we

can plan a proactive and non-partisan role in helping to understand the response to Hurricane Katrina and learn and implement

lessons from this response.

I yield back.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I will be very brief. Indeed, the fact

that each level of government continues to pass blame back and

forth among each other shows how important it is to have a September 11th type commission appointed as fast as possible. The

fact that there was no transport for poor people was almost a

criminal neglect.

The inability to communicate with the first responders, the police

and fire to communicate with each other, was a major problem in

my city of New York at the time of the World Trade Center catastrophe. Everybody knows that there were a number of firemen who

died after they had been told to evacuate. There were a number of

firemen still going up the stairs to prepare to fight a fire after they

were told it was necessary to evacuate, because the communication

equipment was not working. The police and fire communication

equipment was not in harmony. Why, after all this time, haven’t

we at least solved those problems? Why hasn’t there been a mandate from Homeland Security to make certain that communication

systems are workable?

I salute the police of the city of New Orleans and the other firemen and first responders there. But we have a built-in institutional

corruption in some cities, like New York City. The first responders—who are the police and the firemen—half of them live outside

of the city and would not be able to reach the city if there was a

disaster requiring that they be there. First responders ought to live

within 30 minutes, at least, of the assignments that they would

have, and that is a built-in piece of corruption of the process that

needs to be addressed.

Davis Bacon and affirmative action are two items that the President has acted rapidly on. He has quickly moved to suspend requirements of Davis Bacon for contractors operating in the reconstruction and reclamation of New Orleans and the Gulf region. He

has quickly moved to suspend affirmative action. Why do we act so

rapidly on those two items? Are they in the way of the process of

rebuilding, the process of reclamation? I don’t think so. They run

counter to the needs that everybody has expressed: to have the people who live in the region be given first priority in the jobs, as they

try to reconstruct their lives. They should have priority of the jobs.

So don’t reduce the amount the jobs pay. Davis Bacon already

would tell you that in the area that salaries of workmen in the construction industry is lower than most other areas of the country.

And affirmative action certainly would not hurt anybody. It is a

city of more than 60 percent minority. And why should you worry

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about affirmative action to the point that you suspend it for contractors? It should be doubly reinforced in order to guaranty that

priority is given to those people who want to come back and resettle.

Those are my quick comments, Mr. Chairman. I would like to

hear the people.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Issa.

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to thank the

chairman and the ranking member for holding this hearing. Certainly, it is timely. And I will ask that my entire statement be put

in the record.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Without objection.

Mr. ISSA. I think, out of turn, I would like to apologize to all of

our witnesses today for what you are seeing here. What you are

seeing here is the reason that many of you who are involved, particularly my Los Angeles friends. You need to count on yourself, because you can’t count on Congress to be there for you. There is

some debate about whether or not FEMA reacted properly, whether

or not it can be reformed to act in all emergencies properly.

But every year the Congress does one thing right, which is we

send dollars your way specifically earmarked for the kind of disaster preparation that we are talking about here today. And if there

is one lesson of Hurricane Katrina that we should all understand

is you have to be your own first line of defense. And the work you

do, the money that we give you and the matching money that the

cities and the States need to dig deep for is very important.

The next natural disaster quite likely will not be a hurricane. It

will probably not be weapons of mass destruction. It will very unlikely be an airplane flown into a building. It will most likely be

an earthquake, a wildfire, or a flood of some other sort. Today we

are going to hear from you about many things, but I am particularly interested in hearing about the lesson—contrary to what you

heard from some of the other Members—the lessons you have already heard from Katrina. You don’t need to know everything that

went wrong. You need to realize that your plan may be flawed, but

only you can determine the way in which your preparedness is

flawed, and for what circumstances.

Hurricane Katrina is a terrible event, but it is only the sequel

of an event that occurred in 1969 in New Orleans. It was foreseeable. It was something that was in the basic disaster plan for Louisiana. It wasn’t something that they didn’t know, that levees

would breach, that it could be flooded, that pumps would shut

down.

So I ask you very much today, when you are making your statements, when you are responding to questions, please look at this

body and say do you want the men and women on this dais to be

there running your next disaster, or do you want to be in charge

of it? And if you do, help us today to understand that you are

ready, or at least you know how to get ready, with the kind of assistance we are good at. And the kind of assistance we are good at

is passing laws that enable you to do what you need to do and

sending you appropriate money to match the money that you are

spending locally. Hopefully, that will be what this hearing is about,

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because as you can rightfully see, if you want us to run your next

disaster, it starts when we arrive.

With that, I yield back.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Darrell E. Issa follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you very much.

The people of New York continue to send their thoughts and

prayers to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

And, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for calling this hearing. We

must ask the necessary questions and make the necessary changes,

and we must not stop until this government can respond to disasters as quickly and effectively as possible.

It is clear that the response to Katrina was simply unacceptable.

Some have described it as disastrous. Some people drowned, but

others died because the rescue effort did not reach them in time.

There were reports that people waited for 4 days for food and

water. I want to know why the National Guard was not called out

immediately. And I want answers to why support that others were

offering from other States was turned down.

We are calling this ‘‘A First Look at Lessons Learned from

Katrina,’’ but we have no one here from the Federal Government.

And I sincerely do not believe that it is a partisan statement to request a representative from the Federal Government. And I don’t

think anyone in Congress on either side of the aisle wants to interrupt in any way the important work that is taking place on the

ground. But certainly former FEMA Director Michael Brown has

time on his hands. He is no longer in the position. He has time to

be interviewed by all the newspapers. Here is one headline: ‘‘ExFEMA Chief Tells of Frustration and Chaos.’’ There is another article about him attending a spa for treatments. And I could put them

in the record, but——

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mrs. Maloney, that is not the committee’s

fault; we tried to get him here today, just for the record.

Mrs. MALONEY. Well, my point, Mr. Chairman, is we should get

him, even if we have to subpoena him.

Also, the paper reports today that Daniel Craig from FEMA has

resigned, as well as Patrick Rhode, the Deputy Director, is also out

the door. And I think that they should be here to answer questions.

As one who represented New York City, that suffered greatly

under September 11th, FEMA was wonderful. They were there that

night; they stayed there every day; they responded to people; they

helped people. They were important. When we reorganized the

Homeland Security Committee, there was a democratic amendment

to keep FEMA separate, because it is disaster recovery; it is very

important. Yet, its budget was slashed and people suffered because

of it.

We learned many lessons after September 11th. One of them,

and the most tragic, was that our communication system did not

work. The radios did not work. The Federal Government shipped

down walkie-talkies the next day. I know, because I called Congressman Young. He sent them down from the military. But the

same thing happened in Katrina, no communications. And there

were many other problems that were the same problems that we

confronted.

In the consideration of time, I would like to place in the record

a document that was prepared by the New York delegation in the

best sense of commitment and friendship to our colleagues that are

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facing the same challenges that we faced. It is 22 recommendations, 22 descriptions of problems that we confronted in the recovery. And we feel that it is something that can help the legislators

and the people on the ground in the Gulf region. And I request permission to place this in the record.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Without objection, it will go in the record.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Chairman, if I could close by saying, in defense of Ranking Member Waxman, I do not in any way consider

raising concern for taxpayers’ dollars as partisan attack. The fact

that he suggested that contracts be carefully reviewed, competitively bid, when applicable, and that taxpayers’ money be watched,

while we are helping people and trying to save their lives, I respectfully say this is not a partisan attack, this is a concern, one

of the major concerns of this committee, along with getting an appropriate response to help people in disasters such as Katrina.

I yield back the balance of my time, place my comments in the

record, and, as I said, request permission to place in the record the

22 recommendations from the New York delegation for disaster response.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Well, I thank the gentlelady for her remarks, and I say to my friend on the FEMA amendment on the

House floor, I went back and reviewed that, because I think that

is an appropriate issue for Congress to review, should FEMA be

separate, how does it work with Homeland Security. It wasn’t a

partisan amendment, it was very jurisdiction-driven. The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee thought that. It came out of

that separation. Part of it was jurisdiction.

I think that is wholly an appropriate deal. But that was very bipartisan on both sides, if you go back and review the voting on

that. And I think that is an appropriate item for discussion as we

move forward here, and that would probably be within this committee’s jurisdiction. So we look forward to that.

We tried to put together a hearing today, despite opposition from

some of our leaders and others, that would make some sense, that

would give assurance to the American people. We have learned

some things that other jurisdictions that are targets one way or the

other. You know, we are working on this. There were some lessons

learned. There are a lot of questions we still have to ask. We tried

to find Michael Brown to get him here. And this is not the end of

it. But I just appreciate everybody’s participation today.

We are going to now move to Mr. Duncan.

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Obviously,

we all know this is not going to be the only hearing that we will

have on this, and there were other meetings in which we can have

other Federal officials here. I thank you for calling this hearing

and I thank the witnesses for being here. While they are not from

the affected areas, they are experts in being prepared for the types

of problems that we found there.

I will be very brief. Let me just say everything looks easy from

a distance. It is awfully easy to criticize. The response by President

Bush, no President in the history of the world probably has ever

devoted more time, effort, and resources to any natural disaster

than the President has. No country in this world has made such

a concerted effort and response as has the United States of America. No other country in the world would have responded in the

way that this country has to a major natural disaster.

As horrible and tragic as these events were, a lot of good has already come out, and even more good and positive things will happen. We should be very proud of this country and the way it is responding, not only through the government, but also millions of

private citizens. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been donated.

There is probably not a police or fire department or sheriffs department in this country that hasn’t sent people down to help out. A

lot more good will happen in the days and weeks and months

ahead.

Were mistakes made? Yes. Did some people do bad things? One

news report I heard said one-third of the New Orleans Police Department had deserted, but two-thirds of the department were

there doing heroic deeds.

Were mistakes made at the State level? Yes. One report I heard

said that Governor Blanco, when the President and the mayor were

ready to act, she wanted 24 more hours to make up her mind. But

has she done good things? Yes.

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Has the Federal response been good? Some of it people made

mistakes, but most of it has been just amazing.

So I think we need to keep those things in mind.

As I said when I started, it is easy to criticize. Everything looks

easy from a distance. But I will tell you this, I think we should

keep in mind that no other country in this entire world could have

or would have responded in the way that we have and are, and I

thank you for calling this hearing.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you.

Mr. Kucinich.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you very much. I want to thank the chairman and the ranking member for holding this hearing, although I

will say that it might strike some people in this country—maybe

those in the Gulf Coast area—as being somewhat curious that Congress is holding one of its first hearings on Hurricane Katrina by

talking about Los Angeles, Miami, and D.C.

It would appear that if you want to hold a hearing about

Katrina, you would be talking about Louisiana, Mississippi. This

first hearing that is being held in the House of Representatives,

while noteworthy and gratefully received in the context of the way

things are here today in Washington, nevertheless, still will leave

unresolved questions that, if they were answered today, would shed

light on the predicaments some of the representatives from these

communities might have.

It is curious that we say we want lessons from Katrina without

actually studying Katrina here in this committee. This means that

we really don’t want to look at Katrina. We prefer to talk around

it, which is exactly why it happened. There is a larger question

here, of whether or not a certain type of philosophy of government

has been at work that set the stage for the disaster.

Bernie Sanders is right when he talks about how in the world

can we ignore global climate change in the context of talking about

Katrina, because if we ignore it—and we have—what relevance

does that have for people from Miami, from Los Angeles, and from

the District of Columbia? How in the world can we ignore—as we

have—issues of poverty, which inevitably confines people’s mobility

at a moment of disaster? What implications does that have for

Miami, Los Angeles, and the District of Columbia?

Yes, it would be interesting if we had the tables turned and

members of the panel had the chance to ask us questions about

what we are doing about the basic elements that we already know

gave rise to the tragedy. This question goes far beyond partisanship. To lay this question on a partisan basis is to do a disservice

to our role as Members of Congress. This goes to the legitimacy of

the Government itself. Government ends up being a huge scam if

it doesn’t do anything to protect people’s basic right to shelter, to

clothing, to food, to protection in an emergency.

This committee has a real opportunity to set the stage for real

hearings which get into deep analysis of what happened and of

what we can do to truly help Miami, Los Angeles, and the District

of Columbia, and all the other communities who are waiting to see

if the Federal Government will shift its perspective and take real

responsibility for creating the circumstances that helped provide a

buffer for any community hit by a disaster. Thank you.

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you. Let me just say to my friend

that we wanted to look at everything involved with Hurricane

Katrina, but we didn’t want to pull people off the job. We will be

sending members of this committee to New Orleans on Sunday,

and the Gulf Coast and Mississippi, where we can look first-hand

at this, get briefed, and, I think, be in a better position to discuss

these issues.

But it was our position that we didn’t want to drag people away

from that, to have to come back at this point. We are looking for

others. I have tried to work with your ranking member, make this

as complete as we can. We felt it was important we move ahead.

And we do have the former mayor of New Orleans that will be here

today talking, as well. So we are not ignoring Katrina, if it appears

that way.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, will we bring FEMA officials and

former FEMA officials before us in the future?

Chairman TOM DAVIS. That is certainly our intention.

Mr. KUCINICH. I thank the gentleman.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you all.

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you so much, Chairman Davis. And I

agree with the comments of my good friend, Mrs. Maloney of New

York. FEMA did do an outstanding job in September 11th, as did

Mayor Giuliani and Governor Pataki, too. So let us make sure we

recognize their contributions.

And I would like to recognize two special witnesses that we have

before us today, and I thank the chairman for inviting them: Mr.

Tony Carper, the director of the Broward County Emergency Management Agency, and from my district, my good friend Chief Carlos

Castillo, the director of Miami-Dade County’s Office of Emergency

Management. As director, Chief Castillo is responsible for coordinating the county’s mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery for major emergencies, such as hurricanes. And south Florida,

as all of us know, is no stranger to hurricanes. Chief Castillo is

going to discuss the experiences of our area, as is Mr. Carper, in

dealing with these natural disasters.

In 1992, 13 years ago, Hurricane Andrew brought near total devastation to communities in my area of south Florida. And the questions posed by Miami-Dade and Broward County after Andrew are

similar to those being addressed by the various Gulf Coast localities in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and I think that is

why my good friend, Mr. Kucinich, would agree that is why we are

here to discuss the experiences of these areas, such as what can be

done to lesson the damage to life, to infrastructure, to property, as

well as how to incorporate the needs of a diverse population into

a unified response plan. What plans are in place for evacuations?

Who imposes these orders? Who carries them out? Who brings food

and water to shelters? Could what happened in New Orleans happen in other cities?

Furthermore, with the international war on terror, new precautions must also be taken. And, as a result, counties and cities

are now faced with the task of preparing for domestic acts of terror

following a natural disaster.

The lessons learned in the 13 years after Andrew have enabled

us in south Florida to implement one of the most sophisticated

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emergency response plans in our Nation today, so it is important

to hear from these officials.

And I visited the emergency management facilities in Miami as

recently as this Monday. Hurricane Katrina adversely impacted

our residents in south Florida, with hundreds suffering damage to

their homes and businesses. And we are asking FEMA to provide

individual assistance to those who were hurt by Katrina, but

FEMA has refused to do so. Our entire Florida congressional delegation, including our two Senators, in a bipartisan manner, we

have been pleading with FEMA to change its decision and provide

us this individual assistance. Many lost their homes. We were fortunate to have an effective local response plan so that damage assessment and cleanup could occur immediately. And we need to

learn from the mistakes of local, State, and Federal agencies that

have remained in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina so that we

can be better prepared for the future. And I think south Florida

can provide us with some of those lessons learned after Andrew.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, again, for their invitation.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you.

Ms. Watson.

Ms. WATSON. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for being brave

enough to hold this hearing, but it is premature. I look on the

agenda and I find two of our finest from the city of Los Angeles.

I just sent my staff down to find out if they have been in New Orleans.

As I look at the briefing memo, it says ‘‘Back to the Drawing

Board: A First Look at Lessons Learned from Katrina.’’ Yet, no one

is here from FEMA from Katrina. Unless the people at the table

have been there, what can you tell me went wrong? Now, I know

we plan in California, because we are prone, as I found out none

of you have been in New Orleans, but you have sent people, and

I appreciate that.

This particular hearing says the purpose of the hearing is to investigate. Now, investigate means that you go and you get the people who were involved, and you speak to them about what happened. It is to investigate the emergency plans. Now, we have been

planning for decades, and the rest of the people invited come from

Washington, DC, and New York. No one but Marc Morial—and he

is not here—at least his chair is vacant. Is he in the audience?

Chairman TOM DAVIS. As I announced earlier, he will be joining

us for a limited period of time.

Ms. WATSON. He is not here at this moment.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. That is right.

Ms. WATSON. He is not here at this moment. So it should be clear

to most Americans that we have serious problems with our Federal—get that, Federal—emergency response mechanisms. There is

one thing we have to do, and that is to respond to a disaster that

is sprung upon us without warning. But we were warned. I remember the weekend before the hurricane hit, listening to a newscaster

on the Weather Channel, Channel 8, saying if it hits as a Category

5, it will change the topography of the Gulf States. That really was

striking to me. I said, wow, is he harsh. And he said that he saw

a sign that said ‘‘Leave or Die.’’

And, for the life of me, I did not know why that did not inspire

the President to issue a disaster declaration on Saturday, the 27th.

FEMA waited until Monday, the 29th, 5 hours after Category 3

Katrina made landfall. And they waited to even submit a plan to

respond. Now, all of you can tell us what you would do in a disaster, but I want to find out why we didn’t move quicker. By then

we had lost our best chance to save the most lives, organizing a robust evacuation of the threatened area.

And in reality, Mr. Chairman, we did have much more than 2

days to prepare. Almost exactly 1 year before Katrina, FEMA organized an exercise wherein a fictional Hurricane Pam hit New Orleans head-on. They studied who needed to do what to save lives.

They developed a plan to protect Americans. Now, this was not the

massive failure of imagination of September 11th, this was a failure to carry out their own plans and responsibilities.

But the most tragic result of this disaster, Mr. Chairman, is how

so many Americans were victimized, and most of them were poverty-stricken. For many poor residents of the Gulf, both inside and

outside New Orleans, Katrina was the only immediate cause of

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their misery. The truth is they live constantly on the edge of disaster. And when it came, they, more than others, lacked the resources to protect themselves and their communities.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you.

Ms. WATSON. I will submit the rest of my comments.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Without objection. The gentlelady’s time

has expired and her testimony will be put into the record.

Ms. WATSON. Thank you. And I hope the press will get it.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Diane E. Watson follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Platts.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you for

holding this important hearing. I also want to thank you for taking

care to structure this hearing in a way that does not disrupt the

ongoing relief and recovery operations underway in the Gulf States.

I commend you for working to ensure that governments at all levels—Federal, State, and local—do right by our citizens in the event

of a catastrophe. Each of us who serve the public bears shared responsibility for this task.

I would like to share a quote from the founder of our nuclear

Navy, Admiral Rickover. The Admiral stated, ‘‘Responsibility is a

unique concept. You may share it with others, but your portion is

not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you.’’ Admiral Rickover’s quote should be our guiding principle in this challenging time. This hearing should be about meeting our responsibilities, and not about laying blame.

I believe that as members of this committees charged with overseeing the operation and accountability of the Federal Government,

we have a responsibility to look at how all levels of government coordinate operations from a broad perspective. We have a broad perspective to engage in substantive discussions with local and State

officials to ensure that the systems and plans we have put in place

over the years are as effective as possible.

As we plan for disasters, we need to remember that these plans

must be more than just a theoretical exercise. We can no longer afford to overlook the operational challenges that will inevitably

come with the implementation of even the best laid plans.

I emphasize to our witnesses today, especially those of you who

serve on the front lines in local government, now is the opportunity

to offer your candid assessment of efforts to coordinate emergency

planning.

Of course, there can be no responsibility without accountability.

While we in the Congress stand ready to assist those who have

been affected by Hurricane Katrina, we must diminish our disaster

assistance funds responsibly. This money is too important to be

misspent. Any dollar lost to fraud or waste is a dollar that does not

make it to someone who is in need. With sound management, appropriate controls and accountability, we will have the means to

continue to provide resources to those who are truly in need of our

shared assistance.

As I am sure we will hear from the witnesses today, financial actions at the Federal level have a direct impact on State and local

governments, whether it is in the State matching requirements

under the Stafford Act or the process for reimbursing local fire and

rescue departments for their work, the appropriate distribution of

Federal funds is integral to ensuring that we respond effectively to

incidents of national significance in emergencies.

Again, Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing, for

helping us to meet our responsibility to the American people. I look

forward to the testimony of our witnesses. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you.

Mr. Van Hollen.

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Well, Mr. Chairman, thank you and Mr. Waxman for holding this hearing. I am pleased, as others have said,

that this is going to be the first of many hearings, because I do

think that in order to learn the lessons of Hurricane Katrina, of

course, it is important to have the first-hand testimony of people

and decisionmakers involved in that, and I understand that will be

something the committee takes up.

I do think, given the dialog and exchange we have seen this

morning, and, more importantly, given the jurisdictional problems

within the Congress between different committees and rivalry over

who gets to talk about what, it is essential that we do have one

commission that takes an overall comprehensive look at this issue.

It should be an independent, bipartisan commission. We have

heard everyone on both sides of the aisle wants to find the facts.

No better way to find those than a totally independent commission

that has the trust and confidence of the American people.

That is not to say that this committee and other committees

shouldn’t pursue the areas of jurisdiction. We should; that is our

responsibility.

Let me just say, with respect to the lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina, I was a little concerned to hear one of my colleagues

on the other side of the aisle from California advise the witnesses

from Los Angeles that in the future you are on your own; don’t depend on the Congress, don’t depend on the Federal Government for

support. And I can understand, looking at Katrina, why people

would reach that conclusion. I think that clearly there were mistakes on all levels of government, but clearly FEMA failed in many

ways. So I can understand some reaction on the part of local and

State governments, saying we are going to have to plan this totally

on our own.

And I would encourage people to do everything possible they can

on their own, but let us not kid ourselves. A disaster of the kind

of magnitude we saw in Katrina, a disaster the magnitude of the

kind of terrorist attack, a dirty bomb that you could see somewhere, is going to, in many cases, overwhelm local and State resources, and the Federal Government is going to have to be involved. So the answer here isn’t you are on your own. The answer

is let us make sure that we fix what happened at FEMA. Let us

make sure that we fix what happened at the local and State level

so that we can work together and have the Federal resources in the

future the way they want to work.

Now, I represent an area that is right here in the National Capital Region, and clearly, along with my colleagues from other parts

of the country, what happened in response to Hurricane Katrina

has raised a new urgency about whether or not we are prepared,

and I am very pleased today to have two representatives from the

District of Columbia here to talk about preparedness in the District

of Columbia.

I think this will also be an ongoing discussion in this committee.

We have had hearings before where we had FEMA representatives

and others talking about the preparedness in the National Capital

Region, which clearly is on anyone’s short list of a potential terrorist target. We have already seen that from September 11th. And

the testimony we received in the past from both State, regional

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leaders, local leaders, and Federal leaders was, yes, we are ready,

or we are getting much more ready.

Well, I think, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we all need

to take another look at the difference between concept and laying

something out on paper, and being able to implement that under

terrible conditions. So I look forward in the days ahead to doing

that.

Just to flag one issue, for example, as part of the reorganization

of the Department of Homeland Security, they downgraded the position of the person over at Homeland Security responsible at the

Federal level for the National Capital Region. It used to report directly to the Secretary. They have now downgraded that. I don’t

know what the consequences of that are, but it certainly raises lots

of concerns with me. And I am looking forward, not just today, but

in the days ahead, to talking about the different contingencies that

we have in place in the National Capital Region and other places

around the country that are at risk, whether it is from a natural

disaster or a terrorist type attack.

Mr. Chairman, again, I thank you for holding these hearings. I

look forward to the testimony.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Van Hollen.

Ms. Foxx.

Ms. FOXX. Mr. Chairman, could you come back to me after the

next person?

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Marchant.

Ms. FOXX. Thank you.

Mr. MARCHANT. Mr. Chairman, I will submit my comments in

writing so we can get to the witnesses.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Clay.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Chairman Davis and Ranking Member

Waxman, for holding today’s hearing. In the wake of Hurricane

Katrina, it is essential that all of our cities evaluate their emergency and evacuation plans to ensure that no one is ever left behind. I welcome our witnesses and thank them for graciously providing this committee with insight into the steps they are taking

to protect their citizens.

While this is an important first look at the lessons learned from

Hurricane Katrina, it is imperative that Congress go a step further

and establish an independent commission to study the Federal

Government’s response to this disaster.

The disaster brought by Hurricane Katrina is indisputable. The

failure of government agencies and elected officials to effectively

minimize the suffering and death of the victims in the Gulf Coast

is indefensible.

History will record that the Katrina disaster is a turning point

in this Nation’s history. When the waters rose and the levees burst,

the world watched as thousands of sick and elderly Americans,

thousands of poor families with young children cried out for food

and water. American citizens who trusted the advice of government

were abandoned in an evacuated city without food and water, without plumbing, without law enforcement, without transportation,

and without hope.

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The pictures we saw were nothing short of unbelievable. As a

Nation, we can no longer pretend that all Americans have the opportunity to share in the wealth of this great Nation. The winds

of Katrina exposed the truth to all Americans and to the entire

world.

The very least this body must now do is to abandon the partisanship that has stifled public policymaking for too many years. We

are elected officials and our first responsibility is to represent the

people, not to represent political parties. There should be no disagreement that whatever government did or did not do in response

to this hurricane, we did not do our best. The mission failed, and

it was not the failure of one person or the failure of one government agency or the failure of any political party, it was a collective

failure. Now we must come together to do everything humanly possible to make certain that this never ever happens again.

It is my hope that today’s hearing will not only shed light on the

policies of major cities, but will also encourage every city and State

to ensure that adequate safeguards for the future are in place to

effectively respond to future large-scale catastrophes. The people of

this Nation expect nothing less.

I yield back and ask that my written statement be included in

the record.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Wm. Lacy Clay follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Clay, thank you very much.

Let me just say we just confirmed with the White House that on

Sunday there will be three committees involved—we will be the

lead committee—in taking a CODEL to New Orleans. We will have

three Republicans and three Democrats from this committee going.

Mr. Waxman will name the three from the minority and I will

name three members from the majority. I just want to announce

that. I think that is an important part. We will be meeting with

some of the people down there. I hope that answers the concerns

of some of the Members.

Mr. Westmoreland.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to

thank you for having this hearing and showing the leadership that

we are not looking at New Orleans, we are not looking at Katrina;

we are looking at some lessons learned. And I want to apologize to

the witnesses for having to sit through all of these opening statements. I know that you are here to assure us that your cities and

your leadership are prepared to handle either a natural disaster,

a terrorist attack, or a manmade catastrophe.

You know, back to the drawing board for me means that I had

always been under the impression that government works best

from the bottom up, not from the top down. And I think if we look

at the drawing board of how our country is set up, how our States

and our local governments are set up, it is the fact that local people

helping local people is the best. They know their needs the best of

anybody. I think the important part looking at what happened with

Katrina, is the fact that there was no leadership at the local or the

State level.

I think that the main lesson learned is that our government does

not function well when it is a top-down decisionmaking body that

we have to do. I think that is a lesson that you didn’t have to go

to New Orleans to see. I mean, if you couldn’t learn that from

watching TV, then you may need to rethink what the lesson is, because you could just look at what was going on and compare it to

what happened on September 11th, when you saw the leaders of

the city walking through the streets, going to command posts, having the emergency services work like they did. And I did not see

that happening in Louisiana.

And I would just like to say that I heard some other people on

the other side of the aisle talk about the fact that there was nobody

here from FEMA. We are not investigating—and the chairman was

very wise to do that—what happened with Katrina. And the fact

that the speaker and the majority leader of the Senate announced

that they were going to form select committees to work jointly to

have hearings so these people would only have to be subpoenaed

one time and not be taken away from the important business that

they are doing in the recovery and relief and the reconstruction,

they would only have to come up here once and be subpoenaed

once, and they could work together. And, yet, the minority party

issued a statement after that, that they wouldn’t even participate

in those hearings. But I am glad that they are here to participate

in this hearing and hear how we can better help you.

We want to make sure, if we are going to be blamed for it, I

guess we need to make sure that every city is prepared to answer

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the call of your citizens when we come into a time of need. So I

am very anxious to hear what you say, and I am very anxious to

hear how you think that we can help you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Davis.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman,

and I will be brief. Let me, first of all, thank you for calling this

hearing. And I appreciate all of the witnesses who have come to

testify. I appreciate the representatives from the various jurisdictions who have come to share with us how well and what it is that

they have been doing, and how they are prepared for natural, as

well as, perhaps, even manmade disasters.

However, I find it difficult to really understand how much we are

going to glean from them in relationship to what our response was

to Katrina. I guess what they can tell us is what is happening at

the local level, their local levels. But I think it is pretty clear that

the preparation, the planning, and the initial response from FEMA

was a colossal failure. And if they can help us not go down that

road again, then certainly their time will be well spent.

I have been doing some research of my own, and I looked at the

way that we handled the relocation of people after the 1994 earthquake in Los Angeles, and I certainly hope that we will follow some

of that in terms of the utilization of HUD resources, to provide

housing for people who were uprooted and dislocated.

So I look forward to hearing the witnesses as they help us to prepare in such a way that, locally, we understand what we can do

and how we can do it, but also recognizing that there has to be a

responsibility beyond theirs and that the overarching responsibility

for these kinds of disasters really comes from the Federal Government, and that puts us back at the hands and at the feet of FEMA.

So I thank you very much and yield back the balance of my time.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Ms. Foxx.

Ms. FOXX. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for having

this meeting.

I am afraid I am going to have to associate myself with my colleague, Mr. Westmoreland, and not with the comments just made

by Mr. Davis. I think that we have a major problem in our country

when we look to the Federal Government to solve all of our problems. The role of the Federal Government is to provide primarily

for the defense of this Nation, and I think that our role in disaster

relief should be to make sure we are always going to be ready to

provide for the defense of this Nation. But I agree with Representative Westmoreland, the more responsibility we give to the Federal

Government, the more we are going to have problems.

It is obviously the role of the local and State units of government

to take care of the people in their localities and their States, and

I am interested in hearing, again, what other localities have done

to be prepared for these eventualities. North Carolina gets hit by

hurricanes many times every single year, and in most cases we

deal with those issues at the local and State level. We ask for Federal help only after we can’t deal with it. But to make it look as

though the Federal Government is the first responder is a terrible

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mistake, and I hope that as a result of what has happened with

Katrina, which is very sad, we will realign or help to realign people’s priorities. It is like asking people to think that Social Security

is their only retirement benefit. By looking to the Federal Government for disaster relief, we are not looking in the right place.

So I hope you all will instruct us as to what you are doing at

the local and State levels that can help us realign people’s expectations, and certainly do the work better from the Federal level, but

not look to the Federal level to be a first responder.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Ruppersberger.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Sure. First, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank

you and Ranking Member Waxman for your leadership in holding

these hearings. I also would like to express my heart-felt sympathy

for those who have lost so much in Hurricane Katrina.

The President called the overall response to Hurricane Katrina

not acceptable, and I agree. The response was a local, State and

Federal failure. The system absolutely failed the people of the Gulf

Coast. The way the system is set up now, if the local government

can’t handle the situation, if the State can’t handle it, that is when

the Federal Government needs to step in. But that didn’t happen,

and we need to know why.

Thousands of residents of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and

Florida were ordered to evacuate, but when they reached the

evacuationsites like the Superdome in New Orleans, they were

abandoned. There was not enough food, water, and medical supplies to go around. As the flood waters rose, thousands of Americans were left behind to fend for themselves amidst chaos and lawlessness.

But our job today is to find out what went wrong and why. The

victims of Hurricane Katrina deserve to know why their Federal

Government, their State government, and local government failed

them. It is about teamwork.

But let us get to the facts so that we can learn what went wrong

and fix it. On Thursday, August 25th, Hurricane Katrina hit Florida, killing at least 11 people, and heads to the Gulf Coast.

On Saturday, August 27th, the President of the United States

declared a state of emergency in the areas of Louisiana, expected

to hit hard by Hurricane Katrina, now a Category 5. The move

paved the way for Federal aid once the storm made landfall.

On Monday, August 29th, 2:05, the storm hit Louisiana with

vengeance and headed toward Mississippi.

On Tuesday, August 30th, two levees broke in New Orleans and

water flooded much of the city. Thousands climbed onto their rooftops and attempted to flee their flooded homes. The ones who could

made their way to shelters like the Superdome and Convention

Center in downtown New Orleans. The crowd was estimated in the

tens of thousands. Flood water and medical supplies were quickly

used up. Violence, chaos, and utter lawlessness took over. The images were played out on national TV. The country stood by in shock

and horror.

Many of the people stranded at the Superdome and the Convention Center were people of color. Many were poor and didn’t have

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rive until 4 days later, on Friday, September 2nd; 4 days later. It

took 4 days for the Federal response to start. Americans died because their government failed them.

These victims—not refugees—were forced to endure horrific circumstances, and that is absolutely unacceptable. We need to find

out what went wrong and fix the system to better respond the next

time for all Americans.

Now, we also need to stop blaming, stop all of the spinning, and

get down to what we are elected to do, and that is to fix the problem and protect the American people.

First, FEMA needs to be taken out of the Department of Homeland Security and restored to an independent agency. It must be

headed by an emergency management professional with direct line

to the President. FEMA needs the independence to address disasters without navigating through layers of bureaucracy. It is about

leadership.

As part of this committee, I believe we must investigate where

the breakdown between the local, State, and Federal Government

happened, and prevent it from happening again. We have brought

this broad array of local and State experts together today to help

to bring some insight into what went so terribly wrong, and this

is just the start. I believe it is our responsibility as members of this

committee and citizens of the country to proceed forward and totally investigate the matter.

We must send a clear message to our country that whether you

are Black or White, rich or poor, Republican or Democrat, your government is here to protect you. We must do this quickly and keep

our country and our citizens safe. We cannot control when the next

disaster will come, but we can control how we prepare for it.

And as far as the issue of hearings, it is extremely important

that we have an independent commission like the 9/11 Commission. When we were attacked, we came together as a country, a

good commission. We have precedent. We need to do that. We need

to have credibility with respect to the facts that we get and the decisions that we make.

Mr. Chairman, again, I thank you for your courage and leadership, and you, Mr. Waxman, for coming together with this hearing,

and this is just a start.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Ruppersberger.

Mr. Shaw, you want to make an introduction at this point, and

then we will still have a couple more statements, but we are almost

to the panel.

Mr. SHAW. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Waxman, members of the committee. I very much appreciate your allowing me to

introduce Mr. Tony Carper of Broward County, FL. Tony serves as

Broward County’s Emergency Operation Coordinator, a position he

has served in since his appointment in 1993.

Prior to arriving in Broward, Tony served the residents of

Brevard County, which is just north of Broward County, for 13

years. Currently, he is president of Governor Jeb Bush’s Hurricane

Conference and on the Board of Directors of the Florida Emergency

Preparedness Association.

As a resident of Broward County and a member of the Broward

Congressional delegation for the past 24 years, I am extremely

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proud of the preparation and level of professionalism that Tony has

demonstrated, as well as the wonderful county employees of the

EOC. Tony has led our county through 14 hurricanes, tornadoes,

floods, and wildfires since 1995. Tony has a balanced and organized

approach to each disaster, and has worked extensively with his

local and State counterparts to ensure necessary resources are in

place following a disaster.

In south Florida, and Broward particularly, we take great pride

in the level of public preparedness prior to and directly following

a named hurricane. We all suffered through the tragedy of Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Elected officials at the local, State, and Federal levels and the entire community rose to the occasion and committed themselves to achieve preparedness for future disaster.

Under Tony’s leadership, as a hurricane approaches Broward

County, the Emergency Operation Center is fully operational at

least 24 hours prior to landfall. As the storm makes landfall,

Broward County officials use the county EOC as an emergency

command center where public utilities and law enforcement are coordinated among other needs. Broward County has the means to

get the necessary supplies to those in need in a timely manner.

This success comes from direct communication and work with the

Broward Sheriffs Office and the Florida National Guard.

It has been made clear to us over the last several weeks that

hurricane preparedness is critical. In Florida, whether it is Governor Bush or Broward County officials, residents of Broward

County are informed of the impact of the storm and the need to

evacuate from low lying areas near the coast and in and around

the intracoastal waterways. Mandatory evacuations are handled in

a prompt time period, allowing the maximum amount needed to

move hundreds of thousands of residents from the coast, many

being elderly. These quick decisions are all outlined in the county’s

Comprehensive Emergency Operations Plan.

Mr. Chairman, as the committee hears from our Nation’s first responders and the emergency coordinators, I trust you will take firm

action to ensure that what we witnessed in the Gulf region can be

avoided. I thank the committee for the opportunity that I have to

introduce Mr. Carper, and I would like to say that I think Broward

County’s plan, as well as, I am sure, some other plans that you will

hear from today, can be used as a template. We must learn from

this tragedy.

And I applaud you for having this hearing and I thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Hon. E. Clay Shaw follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Lynch.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In order to be as brief as

possible, I am just going to associate myself with the remarks of

Mr. Ruppersberger.

I would like to say, however, that the title of this hearing is

‘‘Back to the Drawing Board: A First Look at Lessons Learned from

Katrina.’’ First of all, I appreciate all of the witnesses here, and I

know several folks have come in from Los Angeles and we have

some folks from Washington. But I think that at some point in

these hearings—I hope there will be more—we should probably, I

think, talk to some folks who were in charge in Louisiana and Alabama and Mississippi.

I heard the comments of Mr. Westmoreland, my dear friend and

colleague, that we all got to watch TV and see what was going on,

but I think that we need to learn at a deeper level than just sitting

on our couches and watching people suffer. And I have to admit

that I did not recall that the hurricane hit California. I do not recall that the hurricane hit Washington, DC. I do not recall that the

hurricane hit the Heritage Foundation.

And that is where the great majority of these witnesses are from.

And I don’t see anybody who was actually in charge on the ground

in either Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama.

So I think if we are really honestly looking to get to the bottom

of this and figure out what we can do to straighten out the problems, we ought to talk to some of the officials who were actually

on the ground and had to deal with the disaster that occurred

there. I think we owe that to the American people.

And I yield back. Thank you.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Porter.

Mr. PORTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to share a

totally different perspective, possibly, this morning. I know that

there are many Members here that are rushing to judgment and

there are many Members here with an open mind. I do believe that

we are all here trying to do the right thing.

But I had a call on Sunday morning, prior to the storm hitting,

from a friend who had family in Mississippi, in Pass Christian and

in Bay St. Louis, and a little community called Picayune. It was

Sunday morning, probably 10 a.m., and they anticipated that their

family that were living there were going to be in harm’s way.

So I decided to load up my little Suburban with a couple generators, some water, some things that I thought may be a challenge

to pick up in Mississippi or Louisiana, drove cross-country, called

my office early Sunday morning and ask them to overnight a satellite phone to me so it would be in Dallas by the time I got there.

Well, to make a long story short, I was called by a friend that

anticipated help, and I got to the beach in Mississippi, I believe,

early Wednesday morning. Had picked up a U-Haul in Louisiana

on the way and loaded it with water from our friends at Wal-Mart.

I am troubled. Having been a mayor, a city councilman for almost

10 years of a small community, but also a State senator for 8, and

now in Congress for two terms, I am troubled that I was the first

responder on the beach 2,500 miles away.

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And I am not telling this story because of what I was able to do

because a friend asked me. I think you probably would all do the

same if a friend called you up and said I think I am going to have

a problem. So it is nothing to do with my driving there, other than

I don’t really understand how I can drive in my little Suburban,

with a U-Haul trailer 2,500 miles, and be the first person on the

beach, and to be the first human that was seen on that beach,

other than neighbors that were still alive and still well.

And I am the first one to agree that we have very serious problems and the system is broken. And I know that we have members

of this committee that have served as a mayor. I know Mr. Turner

was a mayor of a community, Mr. Ruppersberger also represented

local government. We have a lot of folks on this committee.

But my perspective is that I think the most frightening part of

what we are seeing today is that local, State, and Federal Government think and thought they were prepared. And I know we have

a lot of experts here today that are going to talk about their experiences, but I question whether we have communications in this

country where one city can talk to another city, or one firefighter

can talk to a policeman, or a policeman can talk to a highway patrolman, or where a highway patrolman can talk to the National

Guard. Some basic principles I don’t believe are in place today.

I am sure we have experts here that will talk about their communities, but is there any local agreements between Washington,

DC, and Baltimore if there is a problem? I don’t know. I expect

that we are going to have that opportunity.

But there are a lot of things happening beyond my fear that

local, State, and Federal Government think they are prepared, and

that is the hurricane and political destruction that is happening in

the city. Literally, I am on the beach—and my friends, by the way,

one home was totally gone, one home was under 6 feet of water,

and another home was OK in Picayune.

I am listening to my satellite radio to the news, and I hear politicians in Washington already blaming, while we are still rescuing

people in New Orleans. And I am looking around thinking why

isn’t there a bottle of water here, a semi load of water coming from

another city.

Why isn’t another community, through the National League of

Cities or the National League of Counties or whoever, why are we

not seeing a semi load of water? I drove 2,500 miles. I had a friend

bring in 400 gallons of gas from California. He flew in to Arkansas,

rented a truck. This was Saturday. He showed up with gasoline.

He is from California.

Now, again, I have served local government. I appreciate and respect that we have professionals out there that really believe that

they are doing the right thing and that they have a system in

place. But as this city is having its own hurricane of trying to get

a one-upmanship on who is going to take the high road, it is going

to be up to you, local government, to cut through all this.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you.

Mr. PORTER. Because we have our own destruction happening in

Washington that is not productive.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you.

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Mr. PORTER. So I thank you for being here. There are a lot of

things we can do together if we do it together. So I thank you very

much.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you.

Mr. Gutknecht. Anyone else? Mr. Souder.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A couple of brief points.

First, I would like to build on Mr. Porter’s point. I have had the

opportunity, because we have had so many long statements, to basically read all of your opening statements, and one of my concerns

is not that the paper plans aren’t there.

I am a senior member of Homeland Security, I chair the Narcotics Committee. I have been to Los Angeles and Miami in with your

port facilities, in with your police people. It is a lot of the same old,

same old. I hope we hear, at least in the question part, what did

you learn, what are the differences? Because most of you are still

saying we have interoperability problems with our radios, that is

a goal; we hope we have plans to evacuate low income.

The massiveness of this stunned us all, and it should be forcing

you to reevaluate everything we have for major catastrophic type

of plans. Clearly, New Orleans did not have a command and control center. And while there are multiple command and control centers, many of them are fairly archaic in our different cities, and

they don’t interact between the different centers. And are those

protected if there is a catastrophic event? Is there a way to have

it mobile enough for a backup system? I hope we will hear some

of those kinds of questions today. And as we build it, because without command and control, this simply isn’t going to work.

Another question is I didn’t see anything in my cursory examination of all of the testimony today, but clearly one of the things that

is happening is the volunteers and charitable organizations have to

be an integral part—not just an add-on, an integral part—of rescue

efforts and assistance efforts. And we have had chaos up and down

this region of people being turned away, of EMS people moving

from four different places and only dealing with one person. Because the American people will do this, and clearly if we had multiple disasters simultaneously, we don’t have the tax dollars to do

it. This is going to strain our budget. We have to have the charitable and volunteer organizations as an integral part.

I think another key, fundamental question is—and it has been

raised several times. The New York Times, I believe, reported that

the Governor turned down the Department of Defense taking over

operations. At what catastrophic level do you say, look, our police

system is wiped out, our systems are out, there has to be a command and control system because we don’t have it? And that is a

politically loaded question, but when we, as the Federal Government, already put $60 billion in down there, and looking at another

$200 billion, at some point we are responsible for those tax dollars.

And the question is when does command and control shift in authority. Those are very difficult questions, but I think some that we

are hoping to hear, those of you who are now some of our most critical and at-risk areas of the country, to say what are you learning

from this; how can we prepare when it is this level of catastrophe

that is the biggest we have ever seen, similar to that, and then

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geted neighborhood catastrophe or part of a downtown area type of

catastrophe, which most of our plans are designed for.

I yield back.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Cummings, last but not least. Thank you.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for calling this critically important hearing to assess the local emergency response plans to natural disasters at major U.S. cities.

While today’s hearing presents us with the opportunity to look

at the road ahead let us not lose sight of the failure of all—all—

levels of government staring at us in the rearview mirror.

However, one need not be an expert to understand that national

disasters of the scope and magnitude of Hurricane Katrina demand

national leadership and resources that only the Federal Government can provide. Although we are reading from the right book

with today’s hearing, our focus should first be on a different page,

one that directly asks the question what went wrong and why it

went wrong in response to the Federal Government in the wake of

Hurricane Katrina.

In the uncertain times immediately following a disaster, our citizens expect to find comfort in the certainty that their government

will respond rapidly, decisively, and ably to meet their essential

needs for food, water, shelter, and security. Regrettably, the American people’s faith in that certainty has been shaken.

The inattention, inaction, and ineptitude that characterized the

Federal response to Hurricane Katrina gave way to disbelief as the

images of American citizens—not refugees—struggling for their

very survival filled our homes and our hearts with the same shame

and grief. Americans from all walks of life are asking why so many

of their fellow citizens were abandoned for 4 days without food or

water; why the dead lay disregarded under the sweltering sun for

days without the dignity of a proper burial; and why so many needlessly died and suffered because vital relief was slow to arrive.

Mr. Chairman, the American people are also asking what if

Katrina had been an act of terrorism. Four years after the attacks

of September 11th, Hurricane Katrina demonstrated with abundant clarity that there is much work yet to be done to improve our

national preparedness for both threats of human design and acts

of nature.

In clear and plain terms, the vulnerability that confronts all levels of government today is in part the result of poor choices that

were made within the administration and the Congress. These policy choices not only hinder Federal response efforts, but they can

undermine State and local plans to protect their communities. Let

us keep in mind that while we do not have control over nature, we

do have control over the policy choices that determine our capacity

to lessen the impact of nature’s mighty blows.

For instance, the inclusion of FEMA within the Department of

Homeland Security, coupled with funding cuts, seems to have

weakened FEMA’s ability to manage Federal emergency response

and assist State and local governments in their disaster preparation and recovery efforts. I am not less troubled by the reduction

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of Federal funding for certain public works projects that are critical

to safeguarding State and local communities.

For example, and as I close, we must determine the extent to

which an approximate 40 percent funding decrease between 2001

through 2005 for maintenance and repair projects for the New Orleans levy system contributed to the severity of the flooding. So too

must we ask are we shortchanging other high-risk communities?

I am also concerned with the administration’s continued applica- tion of a flawed contracting strategy. As it now stands, the $62 billion of taxpayer money that Congress has dedicated for emergency

recovery efforts to Katrina is veering dangerously close to being

subject to waste, fraud, and abuse.

Further, it seems contrary to common sense that while many of

the displaced look for work, our contracting efforts have not sufficiently utilized the potential to employ them. The lack of substantive involvement of small businesses of all types, including

those owned by women and people of color, in the recovery effort

seems just as troublesome.

In the end, let us collectively seize the opportunity to not only

right the wrongs of emergency mismanagement that were so painfully illustrated during and after Hurricane Katrina, but the wrong

of poverty that forces upwards of 37 million Americans to routinely

weather the storms of failing schools, poor health care, and limited

opportunities.

And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Elijah E. Cummings follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Any other Members wish to make statements?

[No response.]

Chairman TOM DAVIS. If not, let me thank our panel for their

perseverance through this. We are delighted to have you today.

Our panel will consist of the Honorable Mark Morial, who is going

to come and has a short timeframe. He is not here right now. He

is the former mayor of New Orleans and the chief executive officer

and president of the National Urban League.

We have Constance Perett, who is the administrator, Office of

Emergency Management, the county of Los Angeles; Mr. Ellis

Stanley, the manager of Emergency Preparedness Department, city

of Los Angeles; Mr. Robert Bobb, the deputy mayor and the city administrator for the District of Columbia; Mr. David Robertson, the

executive director from the Metropolitan Washington Council of

Governments; Mr. Tony Carper, Jr., the director of the Broward

Emergency Management Agency, who has been introduced by Mr.

Shaw; and Chief Carlos Castillo, the director of Miami-Dade County Office of Emergency Management.

It is our policy to swear you in before your testimony, so if you

would just rise and raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much for being with us.

And although a lot of Members have spoken and left, we still have

a lot of Members here to hear what you have to say. We think it

is important.

I am going to start with you, Ms. Perett, and move straight on

down. When Mr. Morial comes, I will swear him in immediately

and go to his testimony. We may also have votes in the middle of

this, but so far we have not.

Please proceed. Thank you.

STATEMENTS OF CONSTANCE PERETT, ADMINISTRATOR, OFFICE OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES, CA; ELLIS STANLEY, GENERAL MANAGER, EMERGENCY

PREPAREDNESS DEPARTMENT, CITY OF LOS ANGELES, CA;

ROBERT C. BOBB, CITY ADMINISTRATOR, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA; DAVID J. ROBERTSON, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, METROPOLITAN WASHINGTON COUNCIL OF GOVERNMENTS;

TONY CARPER, JR., DIRECTOR, BROWARD EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, BROWARD COUNTY, FL; CHIEF CARLOS

CASTILLO, DIRECTOR, MIAMI-DADE COUNTY OFFICE OF

EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, FL; AND

MARC MORIAL, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE, INC., FORMER MAYOR OF

NEW ORLEANS, LA

STATEMENT OF CONSTANCE PERETT

Ms. PERETT. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and honorable committee members. On behalf of the Los Angeles County

Board of Supervisors and our chair, Supervisor Gloria Melina, I

want to thank you for allowing me to come and talk to you about

some issues that are of great concern to all of us.

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You have my statement, so I am not going to belabor our preparedness. I am going to touch on a couple of highlights and then

I am going to talk about some recommendations.

Los Angeles County is no stranger to disasters. I lost count a

long time ago. I have been an emergency manager for 21 years, and

we have had so many disasters that I really cannot remember

them all. During the 1990’s we had 10 federally declared disasters

in a 10-year period. We call it the decade of disasters.

We have been very aggressive in preparing for disasters because

we must. We are large, we are vast, we have 10 million people,

very diverse. We have 88 cities, independent cities, and 137 named

unincorporated areas in our county, and it is very complex. Multiple languages spoken, and we really have to have our act together.

We do this under the Standardized Emergency Management System, which was chartered into law in 1995. It is an excellent system. It is based on incident command. We swear by it. We are able

to coordinate very effectively. You see Ellis Stanley sitting beside

me here. We work on a daily basis together with the city of Los

Angeles, with our other 88 cities, and with our State partners.

I want to emphasize how critical coordination is. We have public

education programs; we have a state-of-the-art emergency operation center, and I don’t see how any jurisdiction can operate without a state-of-the-art emergency operation center. I don’t know how

they can do their job.

Let me move to some recommendations, if I may. They are not

in any particular order, I just wrote them down as I listened to you

and I thought about things.

First of all, I believe that more resources absolutely need to be

directed to the local level. You hear the expression that all disasters are local. Well, they are; they start in somebody’s backyard. So

local government needs the resources to be prepared. Many jurisdictions have one person doing emergency management, and maybe

they have two or three other collateral jobs. You cannot get this job

done if you are not devoting the resources to it.

You need to emphasize mutual aid, because when you see a

large-scale event, nobody is an island; they can’t do this alone. Mutual aid needs to be strengthened throughout the United States.

You need to also have strong State partners. We have that in

California and we believe that it is critical across the Nation.

I would like to see more focus on funding for the Emergency

Management Performance Grant Program. That is the lifeblood of

emergency managers. And just to say, first responders are critical,

but first responders do not do the global overview of coordination

and preparedness for disasters. You need to put funding into that

if you want to see a coordinated, well planned and organized response.

I would like to talk about FEMA and say to you that I believe

with all of my heart that FEMA needs to be a standalone organization, it needs to be reporting to the President, and it needs to be

cabinet level status. This is not a time for going through layers of

bureaucracy, when you have to move fast and be nimble; it is too

important. It is way too important for it to be buried in a large organization.

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I believe that FEMA needs some well defined protocols for how

it is going to provide resources at the State and local level. I believe that, again, is an issue of coordination in advance and understanding when resource is coming, how do you receive them, how

do you put them to use. It does no good to have the finest resources

in the world if you don’t know how to put them on the ground and

people understand how to use them.

I believe from a local level you need to engage your communitybased and faith-based organizations. It is critical. They are actually

the first on the street helping the public when something goes

wrong. They are there handing out blankets and food and water,

and they should be an integral part of any jurisdiction’s preparedness plans. And I believe they should be getting some Federal support for what they do. They rely on donations, and when their regular stock of donations is depleted, where are they going to get the

funds?

It looks like I am running out of time.

Let me also put emphasis on public education and the understanding that people have to know how to take care of themselves

for a period of time, because government cannot do all these things

for them.

And I believe I am out of time, and I thank you very much for

your attention.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Perett follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much for your testimony.

Mr. Stanley.

STATEMENT OF ELLIS STANLEY

Mr. STANLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. And to all of our representatives from the great State of California, thank you too for your support over the years and making sure that we continue to have a

very aggressive emergency management philosophy not only in the

city and the county, but in the State of California.

I do think that there can be some lessons learned. Somebody a

lot smarter than me once said, ‘‘if we fail to learn from the failures

of the past, we are doomed to repeat them,’’ George Santayana.

And I think that we have to take advantage of all the opportunities

that we have to learn lessons from the misfortunes that we have

seen around the world and now on our own soil with Hurricane

Katrina.

On behalf of our new mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, I thank you

for allowing us to be part of this as well.

It is important that you understand part of my background over

the past 30 years started out in North Carolina as an emergency

manager down on the coast of North Carolina, in Brunswick County, then moved to a larger jurisdiction in the triangle area of Durham, NC, then to Atlanta, GA for several years, and now in the

city of Los Angeles, the second largest city in the country; 10 million people in the county, 4 million people in the city, 15 million

people in the greater metropolitan area.

That is only important because as Ms. Perett indicated, all disasters are local, and it is important that we start preparing at the

local level. And on behalf of all of the finest, bravest, and best first

responders in the country, we look at also the individuals, ensuring

that we push preparedness down to the local level. We understand

that when you talk about volunteer organizations, when you talk

about private sector, when you talk about other not-for-profits, they

have a role and responsibility, and it is important that we incorporate them into the planning process at the table before, during,

and after emergencies.

I have not been to the Gulf Coast States yet; however, during the

days of its making landfall, I was in the command center of the

Emergency Management Assistance Compact [EMAC], a compact

of which all 50 States come together to look at what resources and

how they can get them into the affected area. Fifty States that

have resources, both hard resources and technical expertise.

Our city and our community was one of the first to send urban

search and rescue, to send swift water rescue, to make sure that

they were on the ground very quick, very well trained, very well

equipped to assist in this response. So we did learn lessons from

that perspective.

The other thing that we are doing or we are taking the opportunity to is look at the implications and the impact of standards.

What are the standards around the Nation that all cities—whether

it is a smaller jurisdiction that I worked in or now one of the largest jurisdictions—what standards are needed to make sure that we

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cials, that my local elected officials, that the State elected officials

understand how they measure preparedness in their community.

The Congress has a tremendous role, as Ms. Perett indicated, the

Emergency Management Performance Grants, where you could assure that every community, every community in this Nation has a

trained professional emergency manager in that community. The

Emergency Management Accreditation Program is a good tool, and

we will be going through that program in Los Angeles to have an

outside assessment; not what Ellis Stanley says, as the emergency

manager, is our capability, but what an independent peer review

can come in and make that assessment and look at it.

We are doing that now in the capital region area, the Council of

Governments, from a regional perspective, because we realize, even

though it is local, we are not in this by ourselves; it impacts more

than just our borders, and it is important that we work very comprehensively and very collaboratively with everyone else that we

work with in disasters.

We have a regular meeting of the minds, I dare say, with some

of our larger cities: New York, Chicago, the District of Columbia,

San Francisco, Miami, and Los Angeles. We meet regularly just to

talk about what trends are happening, what things are going on;

how are we now reaching a good public education program in our

communities to help.

My time is up, and I thank you so much for yours.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Stanley follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Ms. Norton.

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to introduce the next witness. The next witness, Administrator Robert

Bobb, is the administrator for the District of Columbia, and I can

understand why the chairman called him. It is not simply because

he is a neighbor, it is because of his national reputation for managing tough situations, including tough cities.

I am very pleased that Mr. Bobb has been called here today. He

is the go-to man in the District if you want to get something done.

I want to simply let every one of my members know that Mr. Bobb

is overseeing the work that the District is now doing with 300 evacuees from New Orleans that the city brought up and has now at

the D.C. National Armory. I want to thank him for that work and

welcome him to this hearing, Mr. Bobb.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Bobb, thank you for being here and thanks for the job you

are doing.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT C. BOBB

Mr. BOBB. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Ranking Member and members of the committee. Thank you for this opportunity to appear today to discuss emergency preparedness in the

District and some initial lessons learned from Katrina.

My name is Robert C. Bobb, and I am the deputy mayor/city administrator of the District of Columbia. And as we sit here today,

we are hosting over 300 evacuees from the city of New Orleans, as

well as the Gulf Coast area, as well as the National Capital Region

is hosting over 3,000 evacuees.

But before I begin, I would like to take this opportunity on behalf

of Mayor Anthony Williams, the people of the District of Columbia,

and the people of the National Capital Region to express our deepest sympathy and commitment to continued support and foremost

consideration in our thoughts and prayers of the people of the Gulf

Coast who have been affected by this tragedy. I am myself a survivor of Gulf Coast hurricanes as a native Louisianian, and I know

the horrors firsthand of the devastation that they can bring to individuals and families.

The initial lessons that we have learned from the Katrina incident, and while we have a high level of confidence in the District

and the National Capital Region in our ability to manage a major

event, be it of natural or manmade cause, nevertheless, as a result

of the insights we are getting from Katrina, even while events are

still unfolding in the Gulf Coast, we are taking a hard look at our

plans and capabilities, and the assumptions that underlie them.

The first major area we are reviewing is evacuation. The District

has a disaster evacuation plan. We have designated evacuation

routes, variable message signage, signal timing algorithms, buses

for those without cars, and other aspects of traffic management in

place to enable evacuation. And we have tested some of these elements to various degrees, most recently during the July 4th fireworks. But the tragic events of Katrina, especially as it relates to

those who choose not to or were unable to evacuate have forced us

to challenge some of the assumptions of our evacuation plans.

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Our ultimate goal is to have a workable plan in place to evacuate

the entire District of Columbia in the unlikely event that such need

arises. Although we recently funded a regional walkout plan, our

evacuation planning is heavily automobile-based.

We are now analyzing census data and information from our Department of Motor Vehicles to determine what areas in the District

have high concentration of residents without cars. We will adjust

our plans for the use and deployment of buses based on this analysis. We will also integrate other options such as water-based transport into our evacuation planning.

Most importantly, we will much more specifically tailor our emergency preparedness, training and education to address neighborhood-specific issues so that individuals understand explicitly what

they need to do in the face of an evacuation of their neighborhood.

We will also work more closely with the National Organization

of Disabilities and our Disability Preparedness Center, as well as

other residents with special needs and the organizations that serve

them, to ensure our evacuation planning is practical and makes

sense for all District residents. We will review plans for nursing

homes, hospitals, jails, halfway houses, and group homes to ensure

that no one is left behind.

Another area of major review will be our sheltering capacity and

planning. We currently have plans in place that would enable sheltering a portion of the District’s nighttime population. But based

on our own experience with sheltering Katrina evacuees at the

D.C. Armory, there are a number of small but important logistical

issues we will have to work through that will improve future sheltering operations.

We have worked hard since September 11th to improve our communications capabilities within and across governments and between governments and residents. We have achieved voice interoperability for first responders across the region and are developing

full data interoperability, and we now have a regional alert notification system. But Katrina emphasized the importance of

robustness and redundancy of communication systems, as well as

their vulnerability, during a massive event.

We are also doubling our efforts to sign up residents and the

business community for our alert systems, and we are reviewing

our capabilities for communications among second responders and

support personnel.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bobb follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS [presiding]. Thank you, Mr. Bobb.

The Chair would recognize Mr. Robertson.

STATEMENT OF DAVID J. ROBERTSON

Mr. ROBERTSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the

committee. I am David Robertson, executive director of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.

And if I had just one message for the committee this afternoon,

it would be that any significant emergency in any one city or county quickly becomes a regional emergency requiring a coordinated

response.

In the Washington metropolitan area, we have worked very hard

to do just that. On many levels we certainly believe that we are

better prepared, but certainly there is more to do.

In the aftermath of Katrina, it doesn’t mean that we need to

abandon the good work and the planning to date, but evaluate that

work against new scenarios and a higher standard of preparedness

and response. To that end, the Council of Governments Board of

Directors, at the initial request of Montgomery County Executive

Doug Duncan and other top elected officials, agreed to reexamine

the extensive emergency planning that we have done over the past

several years in light of the response to Katrina.

This is not the first time that our region has stepped forward together to work on an issue of this magnitude. Certainly the terrorist attacks of September 11th caused significant reexamination of

all plans at all levels—State, local, Federal, and regional. What we

have done since that date certainly holds up, I think, to the standards that the Congress and the public have put forward. But more

needs to be done.

We have put forward a Regional Coordination Plan. We think

that is important, as some of the other witnesses have said. Jurisdictions will have to rely on each other in terms of mutual aid, as

well as look to State, Federal, and other assets in the event of a

catastrophic emergency.

We have also put in place communication mechanisms that allow

elected officials, key decisionmakers, and others to communicate on

a real-time basis in the event of an emergency. And we have built

in redundant capacity to that system, with sites in the District of

Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia.

Much of this is overseen by a Regional Preparedness Council

that is hosted and staffed by the Council of Governments. It has

extensive representation not only of local, State, and Federal officials, but the all-important private and non-profit communities as

well.

We have excellent relationships at the tri-State level, with the

mayor and the two Governors providing tremendous leadership on

homeland security in this region, and we are the only region in the

country to have a special Federal office within DHS, the Office of

National Capital Region Coordination, that is a partner.

How have our plans worked? Certainly in the area of Hurricane

Isabel, we fared fairly well. But as has been pointed out in this

room previously, the tractor man incident showed the limitations

of communication.

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Where are we going now for the Council of Governments and for

our partners? We found a number of areas where we think there

are areas of improvement that are warranted. Certainly, we need

to reevaluate the plans to incorporate the lessons of Katrina. Those

lessons will unfold in the weeks and months ahead, and we don’t

want to rush to judgment because more will be found out later as

additional information comes forward.

We need to better understand how mutual aid and State and

Federal assets are applied to our unique region. We need to first—

as some of the other witnesses have talked about—rely on each

other first, apply State and Federal aid when it is necessary, and

make sure that, as a region, that no one is left behind.

We also need to look at coordinated public information system.

I think one of the areas that has been most eroded throughout the

country is the ability to communicate quickly and clearly with citizens. It is not going to be enough just to make sure that the decisionmakers are coordinated. We have to make sure that the citizen

expectations are out there as well, and that we have provided coordinated information to them.

We also need to examine the needs of special populations. Certainly those individuals that lack public transit are important, but

there are a lot of other folks—the elderly and people that may be

in universities or visitors to our region. That is going to be very important.

The Council of Governments will accomplish, not by its own, but

by working in partnership with State and local governments, the

nonprofit and business community sectors, all around one table,

sleeves rolled up, working together to make sure that we have the

best prepared region in the Nation. The American people expect

nothing less. Our citizens and visitors expect nothing less. And our

elected officials have tasked this organization, the Council of Governments, with advancing this work program.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Robertson follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Robertson.

Mr. Carper.

STATEMENT OF TONY CARPER, JR.

Mr. CARPER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon to you,

Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Waxman and other honorable

committee members. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with

you today on this important subject.

I would also like to thank Congressman Shaw for his kind introduction to the committee.

I am the director of emergency management for Broward County,

FL. This is a jurisdiction in south Florida composed of the great

Fort Lauderdale area. We are a very diverse community of 1.7 million residents and millions more visitors annually.

I have been Director in Broward County since 1993, and before

that had 13 years of serving Brevard County, FL. This is over 25

years in dealing with emergencies in my State.

Since 1995, Broward County has declared 14 states of emergency

due to hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and wildfires. During emergency situations, our county charter and State statute provide that

our mayor and county manager have command and control authority of the situation.

With the resources we have available, local efforts are geared toward holding the line until outside resources arrive. The bottom

line is that catastrophic emergencies, whether they be instigated by

terrorism or natural events, quickly overwhelm the resources of

local and State governments. There is and always will be a requirement for an effective national response system to handle these

types of events. However, adequate emergency planning by any

local community is vital for the successful utilization of this assistance.

Emergency planning in Broward County is contained in the

Broward County Emergency Operations Plan. The plan is based on

the principle that local governments bear the initial responsibility

for response to any emergency. As a corollary to this principle, each

level of government accomplishes the functions for which it is responsible, requesting assistance from the next higher level of government only after resources at that level are clearly inadequate to

cope with the effects of the situation.

Florida Statute Chapter 252, the State Emergency Management

Act, requires that political subdivisions develop emergency plans

which are consistent and coordinated with the emergency planning

of State government. This Comprehensive Emergency Operations

Plan fulfills that requirement and establishes a framework through

which governments and agencies of Broward County will prepare

for and respond to and recovery from and mitigate the impacts of

a major or catastrophic emergency.

The plan is strategically oriented and addresses the operational

concepts and responsibilities of coordinated county emergency response, relief, and recovery. The plan describes the basic strategies,

assumptions, and mechanisms through which the county governments and agencies will mobilize resources and conduct activities

to guide and support their efforts.

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This plan is based on certain assumptions and the existence of

specific resources and capabilities. Actual measures taken by

Broward County to respond to each situation are tailored to each

emergency. As such, a great deal of flexibility is built into the implementation of the plan. The bottom line is that our plan establishes the organizational concepts for an effective system of comprehensive emergency management which can respond to any type

of emergency.

Our plan makes the following basic assumptions: First, that the

concept of operations outlined in this plan assumes that a major

catastrophic event has occurred and immediate mobilization of

emergency response forces are needed.

The Broward County Emergency Operations Center will be activated and the State Emergency Operations Center will be activated

to support our operations.

The Governor of the State of Florida will request activation of

the National Response Plan and Federal resources, coordinated

through FEMA and the State, will be deployed to effective areas to

provide assistance to local governments.

The magnitude of the emergency may be such that effective

emergency response and recovery may be beyond the capability of

the county and its municipalities. If this is the case, it is assumed

that State assistance will be requested. If the situation is beyond

the capability of the county and State resources to manage, the

Governor will request Federal disaster assistance.

It is assumed that in addition to State and perhaps Federal assistance, prompt and effective emergency response will require mutual aid from other political jurisdictions throughout the State.

One very important assumption—and I can’t stress this

enough—is that during a major and catastrophic emergency, the

Federal Emergency Management Agency will immediately task Department of Defense assets for immediate response for the emergency effort.

During major and catastrophic events, our plan is intended to

serve as the basis to provide support and assistance to our communities. It also provides the mechanism to receive and organize State

and Federal relief efforts.

The bottom line is that it is imperative that these activities commence immediately and expeditiously.

Finally, we know disasters will strike. No matter how prepared

we are, we know people will be hurt. And that means that an ongoing commitment to continually improve response and recovery is

very important, and we are committed to doing this.

Thank you very much for the opportunity.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Carper follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much, Mr. Carper.

Chief Castillo.

STATEMENT OF CHIEF CARLOS CASTILLO

Mr. CASTILLO. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members. My

name is Carlos Castillo. I am the director of the Miami-Dade County Office of Emergency Management. Thank you for this opportunity to share Miami-Dade County’s experience. I am especially

proud to present before our own Member of Congress, Ileana RosLehtinen.

I am joined today by Miami-Dade Police Chief Robert Parker; assistant county manager for public safety, Susanne Torriente; chief

of staff to Mayor Carlos Alvarez, Denis Morales; and Eric Olafson

from the Board of County Commissioners’ Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.

Miami-Dade County spans over 2,000 square miles, hosts a

major airport, Florida’s largest seaport, a nuclear power plant, and

has a resident population of 2.5 million people. The county has

identified 18 potential hazard areas that could impact our community at any time. Therefore, our Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan encompasses an all hazards approach to prepare and

protect our community. My comments today will focus on the impact of hurricanes.

We have been recognized as a leader in emergency management

from the unified message delivered by our elected officials in times

of crisis to our facilities and staff experience. Following Hurricane

Katrina’s impact, FEMA and State assessment teams remarked

how quickly roads were opened, debris was cleared, power was restored, and a preliminary damage assessment process was begun

in Miami-Dade. We have had some practice. Last year Miami-Dade

County activated its Emergency Operations Center four times for

hurricanes in 6 weeks. We have activated for Dennis and Katrina

so far this season.

Our foreign and domestic disaster response experiences helped

prepared us for Hurricane Andrew in 1992, one of only three Category 5 hurricanes to ever hit the United States. But there was

much to learn, and Fire Chief David Paulison made sure that we

did. As a county, we were on our own for what seemed like an eternity.

We accepted this reality. We must be prepared to be on our own

for the first 24 to 72 hours following a major hurricane. The fact

remains that all disasters are local, and long after resources have

left, the disaster remains local. This doesn’t mean that we don’t

need assistance for any event that may overwhelm our local resources; clearly, we will.

It is clear that the only way to ensure the prompt, coordinated

response our community deserves is to develop preparedness partnerships with governmental agencies, private volunteer organizations, non-profits, and most importantly, our 2.5 million residents.

Hurricane preparedness is everyone’s responsibility. Clearly, there

are different capabilities throughout the country. These differences

should be considered when the Federal Government responds to assist.

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So what have we learned? One of the successes during Hurricane

Andrew was the implementation of the Incident Command System.

This enabled us to effectively manage the resources we had and

were receiving. We continue to train and expand our use of the National Incident Management System, a proven management tool

that has been practiced for many years.

It became apparent during Hurricane Andrew that accurate and

timely information flow was not occurring in the manner needed.

As a result, Miami-Dade developed the Divisional Emergency Operations Center concept that divides 30 municipalities into a manageable span of control, one of the basic tenets of incident management.

One of the hardest lessons learned was our assumption that by

not hearing from parts of the county, they had sustained little or

no damage. The reality was that the southern end of Miami-Dade

was essentially gone. Out of that came Snapshot, a preliminary

damage assessment tool which provides an immediate picture of

which areas are most severely affected, allowing us to mobilize resources and focus on more definitive assessments and needs analyses.

Following Andrew, Miami-Dade County took full advantage of

the Federal Government’s mitigation program. We believe this

funding source is critical in preventing disasters. To date, the

Miami-Dade Local Mitigation Strategy has completed mitigation

projects of approximately $150 million. These include windstorm

and flood abatement projects located throughout the county. Following Katrina, which dumped up to 20 inches of rain on MiamiDade, areas that flooded for days in the past were essentially dry

in less than 24 hours. Our Local Mitigation Strategy is used by

FEMA and the State of Florida is a model program. Mitigation

works.

Without a doubt, much will be learned by communities affected

by these recent storms, just as we have from Andrew and others

since. The challenge is how to enable areas that have yet to be affected by a major hurricane to learn and improve their capabilities.

Based on our experience, we respectfully offer the following recommendations:

One, an all hazards approach must be utilized in order to prepare as a Nation.

Two, a community hit by a major disaster that overwhelms its

capabilities will need assistance as soon as possible to begin the

damage assessment process which will lay the foundation for appropriate response and recovery efforts.

Three, the National Incident Management System is important

and must be utilized to manage assets both locally and federally,

as well as assist in coordinating the humanitarian effort.

And, four, FEMA must be an active partner with local governments in each aspect of emergency management—preparation, response, mitigation, recovery, as well as in training and exercises—

while respecting the role and input of local government in a disaster response.

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Once again, thank you for this opportunity, and I invite you, Mr.

Chairman and members of the committee, to visit us at the MiamiDade County Emergency Operations Center. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Castillo follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman.

We have the honorable Marc Morial, who is the former mayor of

New Orleans. Mayor, we are going to swear you in quickly, we are

going to get your statement, and then we will allow you to give

your statement.

[Witness sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you so much, Mayor. Mayor, hopefully the

chairman will be back to ask the questions once you have given

your statement. Why don’t you give your statement?

STATEMENT OF MARC MORIAL

Mayor MORIAL. Thank you very much, and thank you for the opportunity to share with you and also the chance to be with all of

these distinguished panelists.

I want to offer a few thoughts, not having had the opportunity

to hear the previous testimony, but certainly want to compliment

the committee for its responsibility and its interest in both disaster

preparedness and disaster response, which are two components of

a very important subject.

I do want to say that Katrina is an event of tragic, epic, and, in

my own view, biblical proportions. We now have 1 million Americans who are displaced. Those Americans are not all poor, they are

not all rich, they are not all middle income, they are not all Black,

not all White; they are Americans of every hue and class who have

been displaced.

The pictures that we all saw in the press and on television were

of the most disadvantaged Americans, the most disadvantaged New

Orleaneans who didn’t evacuate because many couldn’t evacuate.

And we saw their suffering and we were affected by their suffering.

And I personally felt the emotions of sadness and anger,

befuddlement and betrayal, courage and hope, because I had a

chance to go to Houston and spend time with those who have been

sheltered there and hear stories of personal courage, of rescue, of

survival through many, many difficult, difficult days down in New

Orleans.

I want to offer several thoughts, some on disaster preparation

and preparedness, and others on Katrina specifically. And we have

been framing—and I shared this with the Senate Committee on

Homeland Security yesterday—our thinking around the idea of the

Katrina victims and survivors, that they need a bill of rights. The

first component of that would be a victims compensation fund.

And I want to let you know that so much of my thinking and our

thinking around this has been governed by the standard that the

Nation set after September 11th. One of the great moments in

American history was the response of this Nation after a great and

horrific tragedy.

In that case, the Congress created a Victims Compensation Fund

at the same time it provided financial relief to the airlines in the

same legislative instrument. And that compensation fund was designed to compensate the victims. All tolled, after September 11th,

it paid out $7 billion to a variety of classes of victims. I think in

this regard we should strongly, strongly enact a victims compensation fund.

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Second, I do know that there has been considerable debate and

difference of opinion on how to examine the many things that went

wrong. It is clear that a lot went wrong. The mistakes and the fumbles have cost people lives. They have cost the massive destruction

of infrastructure and property. State, city, and Federal officials, in

my own view, all made mistakes. What they were, the specifics of

what occurred in the first 3 to 4 days after Katrina can only be reconstructed, evaluated, and examined in a fashion that will give us

lessons.

I believe as if, while the Congress does conduct its oversight responsibilities, that there be an independent commission like the 9/

11 Commission, and here is why. Disaster preparedness and response is a weighty science. Simply because you are a good manager, administrator, or leader doesn’t mean you know disaster response or disaster preparedness.

Because of the magnitude of this, because hurricane season

comes every year, because manmade and natural disasters are

something we have to live with everyday, I think that the responsibility that the leaders of this Nation have to the people of this

Nation can only be fulfilled if it is crystal clear the lessons that

need to be learned; not just assign responsibility and blame, but to

fix, to reform, to strengthen, to improve the system of disaster preparedness and disaster response, which is a sophisticated science

with people who are experts in the field. So I believe that process

would be augmented, would be helped if there were in fact an independent commission that looked at it.

With respect to FEMA, one thing I think is quite clear with respect to FEMA—and then I will talk more specifically about

Katrina—is that I think that Congress should consider writing the

statutory qualifications for the Director of FEMA and the senior

leadership of FEMA into the statute. We would never consider a

non-lawyer to be attorney general, a non-doctor to be surgeon general. We should never even consider a non-expert in disaster preparedness and response for being the Director of FEMA. And Congress can ensure that by creating some statutory qualifications.

Final point on sort of rebuilding and going forward is the serious

need for there to be—there has been talk of a czar, some centralized authority. But there is a need for some centralized authority

to coordinate and oversee, I think, the rebuilding, because this is

going to be a massive undertaking by this Nation. So I would like

to ask, Mr. Chairman and members, that I be given an opportunity

to supplement the record with written remarks which I have not

completed preparing. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Morial follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS [presiding]. Mayor, thanks a lot for being

here. I know you are on a very tight schedule, and Members are

just trickling in from votes. But we very much appreciate your

being here.

Mayor MORIAL. Thank you.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. As you look at this from afar, and from

your perspective as head of the Urban League, what is your impression? Just off the top? We will have weeks of excruciating hearings and detail on this.

Mayor MORIAL. I think the most important thing is to keep the

focus on the people who are displaced. The people who are displaced are traumatized. And when I say that, they run from a person who may have lost a considerable business with 3,000 employees to a person at the other end of the spectrum who may have

been a renter, may have been unemployed or may have been in an

entry-level position, to high school seniors who now face the prospect of not seeing their classmates and not graduating with their

high school class at the school that they have attended for the last

3 years.

There has to be a continuing focus on how we can help people

rebuild their lives, understanding that a return to normalcy is not

going to be immediate; it may not even be intermediate. It may

take a long time for many, many people; not only in Louisiana, but

in Waveland and Gulfport, in Biloxi and Bay St. Louis, those cities

in Mississippi that were completely obliterated, not to mention the

New Orleans region and southeastern Louisiana.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Obviously, the city had plans going back

to your day, FEMA had plans, they had drilled on these. And the

implementation at the end, do you think part of it was that the

storm was more severe than probably people anticipated? People

did not get out of the way that might have been able to leave. Any

impressions?

Mayor MORIAL. Well, this would be the observation. I mean the

kind of framework, the inquiry, there has to be a look at the plans,

but then there has to be a careful look at the execution and the

implementation. What happened? Was there a central command

structure? Was there a central communications system? And then

also, and I think everyone who has been involved in disaster preparedness and response knows, in every case you must be able to

make battlefield adjustments. Sometimes those adjustments are

difficult to make, sometimes they are easy to make.

And in my mind, it is the reconstruction of the events. Because

to ask what in fact happened, what was the responsibility, and to

whose responsibility fell the management of the shelters of last resort, what was triggered in the minds of Federal, State, and local

officials when the levees broke, knowing that all the computer simulations indicated that if levees broke you had a second type of catastrophe, I think there has to be a careful, dispassionate reconstruction not only to look at the plans, but to look at the execution

of the plans and to query whether battlefield adjustments may

have been made at the Federal, State, and local levels.

There seems to have been a breakdown in communications, the

city had a mobile command center and I question whether it was

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tion of the events is a very important part of this process to determine whether the plans were sufficient, but also, if the plans were

sufficient, whether there was execution.

Let me give you a case in point. After Georges in 1998, when I

was Mayor, first time the city had to be evacuated, we realized that

the city’s emergency preparedness plan had a deficiency in that

there were no provisions for ‘‘special needs’’ persons—persons in

hospitals, in nursing homes. So there was an effort to modify and

improve the plan that began in my administration, which ended

better than 3 years ago, to do something for special needs.

Second, working with the State, there were two problems with

the evacuation. One was the capacity of the highways. That was

corrected by creating a contraflow, where both sides of the highways went north. And second, there was an underpass in New Orleans that very easily flooded which would block access, and a new

pumping station was built, which began sometime in 1998–1999, to

try to alleviate that problem. There were post-Georges modifications to the emergency preparedness, the sort of readiness state

that took place at the city and State level. I do not know what continued after 2002. I understand there were simulations, there was

a Hurricane Pam exercise.

I think the committee and the public have to reconstruct all of

that to see if the plans were adequate, one, but then second,

whether the execution of the plan, in fact, met the standards of the

plan.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Panelists, we are going to get to your questions. I think the

Mayor has just got a few minutes here. We are going to try to grill

him for a couple of minutes, and let him get on his way. Then we

will get back to some of the issues that you have raised.

Mr. Waxman.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Mayor.

Mayor MORIAL. Congressman, good afternoon.

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you. Good to see you. Thank you for being

here.

Mayor MORIAL. Thank you.

Mr. WAXMAN. I am going to ask the other members of the panel

to respond to this question, but I want to ask your view of it. It

seems to me that Hurricane Katrina was the first big test of our

disaster preparedness and response capability since September

11th. Clearly, the Federal Government failed this test. There were

also failures at other levels of government.

This is not just my opinion, it is the opinion of that Commission

that was set up to look at September 11th. The Chair of that Commission, Tom Keane said, ‘‘This is not a terrorist incident, but it

brings into play all of the same issues and shortcomings. What

makes you so mad is it is the same things we saw on September

11th. Whoever is responsible for acting in these places has not

acted. Are they going to do it now? What else has to happen for

people to act?’’

Now, Mr. Keane’s essential point is that when it comes to preparedness and response, it does not matter whether we are dealing

with a terrorist attack or a natural disaster, we are just not ready.

Do you agree with that?

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Mayor MORIAL. Based on what I saw in Katrina, it is clear we

were not ready for a natural disaster of the type of Katrina. So

much went wrong. So many people suffered. It has been a very,

very difficult time for the country.

But it has been especially difficult for people who call New Orleans home, to see our friends and family members and neighbors in

awful conditions or displaced in communities that they are unfamiliar with, some maybe displaced in a person’s home. It is hard

for me to respond to the question with respect to our readiness for

terrorism. All I can say is I sure hope that we are ready, and the

public needs to be able to trust that the leadership of this Nation

is ready.

Mr. WAXMAN. Well, when it came to Katrina we had some notice.

We had at least several days notice that the storm was coming. A

year before, FEMA had a report that indicated that if a hurricane

of this magnitude hit New Orleans it could do exactly what it did

do—drive a million people out of their homes and bring about such

enormous disaster. We would not have notice with a terrorist attack.

Mayor MORIAL. That is correct.

Mr. WAXMAN. A lot of people, and I certainly include myself, are

very critical of the Federal Government response. Many people are

also critical of the local response. You were the mayor. Are you critical of that local response? Do you think the city——

Mayor MORIAL. I am critical of the local, State, and Federal response. You know, these responses to be effective have to be seamless and coordinated. We do not know what went on behind the

scenes. There are press reports that are trickling out about what

went on and what did not go on behind the scenes. And I have

heard some things anecdotally through hearsay about what did not

go on behind the scenes in those immediate days. And yes, I

think——

Mr. WAXMAN. Well, if you had been mayor and you had to deal

with that kind of terrible tragedy, would you believe that your local

people were equipped for it without the support from FEMA?

Mayor MORIAL. You had to have FEMA support at a point, particularly in the post-Katrina response. Because once it got to a situation of needing both supplies and rescue, rescue with helicopters,

rescue with amphibious boats, neither the city nor the State have

that equipment, nor have they ever had the resources to buy that

equipment.

The city and its local agencies might own a handful of boats, no

helicopters, no trained search and rescue people to do the kind of

search and rescue necessary. So FEMA and the Federal Government’s involvement post-Katrina, when the situation exacerbated,

was essential.

The other thing is the Federal Government’s assistance in providing supplies, food and water, after an immediate period of 24 to

48 hours, perhaps. Because I would think that the Astrodome

would have sufficient food onsite to be able to accommodate people,

I know in 1998 it did, for 24 to 48 hours. After that, there was a

need for military supplies in order to be able to take care of people.

Mr. WAXMAN. Let me ask you one question, because my time is

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fore we learn the lessons of Katrina to apply to L.A. and Miami,

New York, and other places around the country, do you not think

we need to do a more thorough investigation of what went right,

what went wrong at all levels when it came to Katrina?

Mayor MORIAL. I have testified before this committee, the Senate

Homeland Security Committee, and I think I have been on record

asking the Congress to create a bi/multipartisan independent commission like 9/11 that can operate in conjunction with appropriate

congressional hearings.

I think it requires the involvement of a fairly significant body of

experts who understand and know disaster preparedness and response to avail the expertise of citizens outside of the Congress to

work with the Congress on a process like this.

I mean, there have been many commissions. The 9/11 Commission was all private citizens. I believe the Warren Commission included public officials, Members of Congress, I know T. Hale Boggs

was on the Warren commission and he represented New Orleans

in Congress for a long time.

There are many ways to create it, but we need a dispassionate,

careful look with recommendations, with a commitment I think

from Congress and the executive branch that whatever those recommendations may be, we are going to implement them very, very

quickly, as long as they are sensible.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mayor, how much time do you have?

Mayor MORIAL. I have to go do a conference call. I do not know

how long you all will be. I will be happy to come back.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. OK. If you need to go, we will dismiss you.

We will be here for a while, if you have an opportunity.

Mayor MORIAL. Thank you for the opportunity.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you for your comments.

We are going to go back to the questions for the full panel at this

point. Has everybody had an opportunity to testify? OK. We appreciate that. I was not here for all of it because I was voting, but I

did read everything last night in preparation for the hearing.

Let me just ask kind of a hypothetical question. If a terrorist sets

off a bomb at one of your major sports arenas during a full house

event in your jurisdiction, it is early rush hour, you have an international diplomatic conference you are hosting near the arena, you

have demonstrators picketing that event, you have unknown

chemicals, what is the plan? Just briefly, what is the plan in L.A.?

Mr. STANLEY. That sounds like an everyday event in Los Angeles. [Laughter.]

With the exception of the bomb, we have those major incidents

going on all the time. And when we have major incidents and those

things that we know about, we are able to pre-plan, we are able

to stage up, we are able to have our emergency operations center

very active, we are able to put our contingency plans in place beforehand, and able to monitor the incident.

The incident that you describe would give us that lead time and

we would have the resources of not only having the city of Los Angeles, the greater resources of the L.A. County, the Sheriff’s department, police, the State resources that come to bear with the military and all the other State assets, as well as the incident you deVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:50 Jan 18, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00191 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24205.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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scribe would bring in Federal support from the FBI, from FEMA,

from Secret Service and those things. So we would do that.

Part of that pre-planning is to make those people aware that surround that area that this event is going on to properly equip them

with information, let them know what is going on and what the actions should be if we have some major event there. Again, that is

one of the lessons I think Katrina is going to bring to us very vividly, and that is how to speak with the power to influence human

behavior when we have these major events so that we reduce the

panic, we reduce the angst of ‘‘I do not know what is happening.

I do not know what my government is doing. I do not know what

even they are supposed to be doing.’’

So those are the things in the event that you describe. We would

have good pre-planning, good resources, hospitals on alert, knowing

where all the resources would come from, knowing where the victims would go and able to track those victims, and being able to

get good, quick public information out so that we can reduce the

panic in the surrounding area.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. In the case of L.A. too, the earthquake is

kind of the worst case scenario, is it not?

Mr. STANLEY. Earthquake right now is still our best seller. We

do not know when they are going to come, but we know that we

can have a very large incident. And we do planning. Our technology has increased so we can use the technology to know where

the worst case incidents will occur even before the calls come in,

and in most cases the phones are down, so we can start sending

resources and assets to those areas.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Bobb, Mr. Robertson, what about the

District?

Mr. BOBB. Obviously, there would be a lot of panic. Our first responders would go into service immediately. Our emergency operations centers will go into operations immediately. We had a similar event happen during the IMF World Bank protest where we

had to evacuate RFK Stadium, and we were ready for that incident

when it occurred.

But we believe that we would be ready, we would have our emergency centers in operation, our first responders would be on the

scene, we would have good communication, we would activate our

entire Emergency Management Plan, we would communicate with

our public, and we would bring in all of the Federal agencies that

would be at the ready. So we would be in contact with our partners

throughout the National Capital Region.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. I think the thing that concerns us the

most looking at the New Orleans situation, who is in charge? I

mean, at that point, no one was sure who was in charge of what

at that point. In the case of the city in a situation like that, does

it become Federalized quickly? Do your local partners chip in?

I just think of the incident here in D.C. in March 2003, regarding

the tobacco farmer, Dwight Watson, AKA ‘‘Tractor Man,’’ when we

left the Park Service in charge and it was in my opinion a disaster,

where one guy driving a tractor on the Mall brought the city to its

knees for a day and a half. You never want to have a recurrence

of that. The command and control is very critical. How is that set

up at this point?

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Mr. BOBB. The way it is set up in the District, clearly the Mayor

of the District of Columbia is in charge. There is just no question

as to——

Chairman TOM DAVIS. But on a Federal enclave, he was not. I

know in the case of ‘‘Tractor Man’’ he was out of the loop, unfortunately.

Mr. BOBB. When it becomes a Federal issue, and we work with

Federal agencies all the time, then if it is a terrorism threat, something of that nature, then the FBI. So we have a list of protocols.

But we are the first line of defense and so the Mayor initially is

in charge and then will make the switch-over.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Robertson, are we coordinated with

all the local jurisdictions in terms of the first responders, bridge access, and everything else?

Mr. ROBERTSON. Certainly. In that scenario that you pointed out,

the District of Columbia, as Mr. Bobb said, would be the Incident

Commander but there would quickly be alerts that would go out for

transportation impacts, any health impacts, emergency response

impacts, a fair amount of extensive coordination, conference calling,

to make sure decisionmakers were making the best local decisions

but in a regional context.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. And you have military bases nearby as

well for additional troops, something New Orleans did not have,

that is readily available.

Mr. ROBERTSON. Right.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Carper.

Mr. CARPER. Yes, sir. The scenario the Chair outlines is one that

I think our plan is geared to address. One of the points I tried to

make in my testimony is the plan needs to be strategic and that

it must identify the organizational concepts, the command and

lines of authority, and those types of things to address any situation, no matter if it is the bombing scenario or a hurricane or anything else.

Certainly, another point I think that needs to be made is that

the scenario that the chairman outlines would be something that

would quickly be a national incident and would probably need national resources and State resources as well to support the actions

of local government. But the local government would be there and

should have planning in place to handle the consequence management of the event, handle the victims, and handle the support of

fire fighters, and law enforcement that are going to the scene, and

be able to manage and organize that. Those systems have to be in

place in order to be successful in any emergency.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. And you have had a fair amount of experience down there in the Broward-Dade area.

Mr. CARPER. Yes, sir.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Castillo.

Mr. CASTILLO. Yes, sir. I would like to add to what my colleague

said and also add that for us we enjoy an excellent relationship in

south Florida with our counterparts, with Tony, with the different

departments, police and fire rescue and other departments that

would be involved in something like this. What you described is a

planned event, except for the bomb, of course, but it is a planned

event.

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So that creates a heightened sense of awareness for us, but also

we try to clearly delineate roles and responsibilities in a unified

command scenario where at the lowest appropriate level command

and control would be elevated as needed, thinking ahead of time.

And as was said, in something like this, it would definitely require

outside assistance.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Let me ask each of you, how good is your

communication with the Federal Government on terrorist intelligence?

Ms. PERETT. I think we have an excellent communication. In Los

Angeles County, we have the Terrorism Early Warning Group. It

was established quite a bit before the events of September 11th. It

is multidisciplinary, and although it is chaired by the sheriff, it has

representation from the FBI, LAPD, and many others. They have

been working long and hard and have wonderful connections in

terms of their ability to rapidly get information and basically vet

it, assess it, and let the rest of us know what they believe is important for us to know in terms of our reaction.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. OK. Mr. Bobb.

Mr. BOBB. I would say in the National Capital Region and in the

District of Columbia, in particular, our relationship on intelligence

information, is very good, our working relationship with the Federal authorities in that regard.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. OK.

Mr. CARPER. We have excellent ties to the Federal intelligence

system. In fact, the person in charge of that within our county is

a former special agent in charge for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and he certainly has a network, the lines of communication

to keep us up to date in those issues.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Go ahead.

Mr. CASTILLO. For us, we are part of the Joint Terrorism Task

Force with representation local and Federal as well, and the

Miami-Dade Police Department has a lead role in that for us as

well.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. OK. Thank you.

Ms. Norton.

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to ask a

question first off about real-time exercises. Every jurisdiction in the

country, beginning with the Federal Government, has paper plans

up the kazoo, as they say, and there are groups and task forces of

Federal and local and State officials and everybody looks like they

have done their homework. I am not talking about you, I am talking about everywhere in the country. Every time there has been

anything even approaching an incident, I have seen no indication

that all of this paperwork amounts to something happening on the

ground. I will give you an example.

In this region, you remember out in Virginia when there was a

scare involving anthrax and there was total confusion. We remember when the first plan flew over and there was very little coordination between the District and Homeland Security. To its credit,

the District tried something that I have never heard of in any large

city, and I want to know from each of you if you have tried anything like this.

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The District, on I believe it was July 4th, tried literally an evacuation plan involving cars, I think, as it was supposed to, and the

use of lights in the street. It did not work as well as the District

would have liked. And there are lots of ways it could be improved.

But I gave the city credit for doing a real-time exercise involving

an entire city when it was crowded on July 4th when everybody

comes here. I would like to know if any of you have done any realtime exercises to see if any of these paper plans amount to anything more than a bunch of paper plans.

Ms. PERETT. If I may. It was not an entire city, but a number

of years ago we did do a large earthquake exercise that included

an evacuation component. The city of Torrence cooperated and had

probably about eight blocks of the city evacuated as part of that exercise.

I also wanted to mention, with the question that the chairman

asked a moment ago, just last November we coordinated a major

dirty bomb exercise at the Forum and brought together over 500

first responders plus about 700 volunteers who played the disaster

victims in the Forum, and it involved multiple agency response. So

we do do very large scale evacuation throughout the county on an

annual basis.

Mr. STANLEY. I would like to add, too, from the city of Los Angeles’ perspective, we are doing exercises all the time. You are exactly

right, the plan is a requirement, but unless you exercise that plan

it really means nothing until you have put it in effect to see if

there are any holes. And the key to that is to have time to go back

and address those holes and gaps. And there is nothing wrong with

the plan falling on its face, that is where you want it to fall on its

face is during an exercise so that you can fix it.

We just had an exercise this weekend with the sign language

folks so that they could be integrated well into the process and

know their roles and responsibilities. We have one coming up very

shortly on anthrax and how we move people, and this will be getting the people involved to move them through a process of giving

them prophylactics. We have not tried to evacuate a 500 square

mile, 4 million population as a full-scale exercise, but we are doing

now neighborhood plans. We are working with our neighborhoods

to get them involved and we are doing different full-scale exercises

in the neighborhoods.

Mr. BOBB. Yes. We conduct a number of exercises in the National

Capital Region, table top exercises, which are coordinated through

our Homeland Security advisor’s office. Just 3 weeks ago, we exercised against the National Response Plan and that exercise was

conducted with the Department of Defense, the FBI, local authorities, and the exercise centered around a terrorist incident involving

the potential for radiological as well as a dirty bomb.

So we have the plans in place and we do exercise against those

plans. We have not yet exercised against, other than the one exercise of July 4th of last year, this year with respect to mass evacuation of the city. In our most recent discussions, we are now, as a

result of Katrina, we are now looking at other ways in which we

can broaden the exercises that we are doing against our own internal plan as well as the National Capital plans.

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Ms. NORTON. Does anyone else have anything to say on real-time

exercises? Yes, sir, Chief Castillo?

Mr. CASTILLO. Yes, ma’am, if I can. We have conducted several

full-scale exercises, not just within our jurisdiction but on a regional basis that have task forces that have been established

throughout Florida through our regions, including the county’s administrative building.

But I want to point out, we have planned for evacuation, and for

an emergency manager that is clearly the toughest decision to recommend because for hurricanes, if you make the decision too early,

then the storm may turn off and the next time that you ask for an

evacuation many people will not leave, but if you wait too long, it

is impossible to get everyone out safely.

And that is something that is only realistically tested in an actual situation. Unfortunately, we had that opportunity last year

with two of the activations that we had of the Emergency Operations Center.

Mr. SHAYS [presiding]. The gentlelady has another 30 seconds we

will extend her. She has been here so long and this is her area. We

will then go to Mr. Gutknecht. Thirty seconds.

Ms. NORTON. The emphasis, Mr. Chairman, on evacuation is understandable. It also worries me a lot that we may be fighting the

last war. When I said D.C. tried to evacuate, people were in the

city. It was not trying to evacuate people who lived here. It was

the people who come for July 4th.

It seems to me that the situation we had in Katrina is so atypical

that is not even the best word for it, and that in most instances,

particularly even a terrorist attack, you are not trying to get everybody out of Dodge, as they say, and that the opposite may be the

problem, that you want people to stay in place and they think, particularly looking at Katrina, everybody should up and run.

I am very worried about all this talk about evacuation. For example, the District is now trying to see what would happen if there

were an evacuation and so forth. But to where? I mean, can you

imagine with everybody who gets on the road now, because so

many people come in, two or three times our population, trying to

get out, then you add to that 600,000 people who live here to get

out.

I wonder what you think about evacuation in the first place, particularly since for the most part will we really be talking about

something that takes a whole city down, like a flood that comes out

of Noah’s ark, or are we not far more likely, particularly if it is a

terrorist incident, to be talking about a targeted incident on only

one part of the city where evacuation is necessary?

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. I think that is a question that some of

you may answer later to other questions as well.

At this time we will recognize Mr. Gutknecht. He has the floor.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the witnesses for being here today. These are issues I think we are going

to have to sift through over a long period of time. I would just

maybe start out, and I mean this in a sense of fairness, I think

these exercises, just pursuing what the gentlelady from Washington, DC, just raised, that is, I think it is good to have the plans,

I think it is good to have the exercises.

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But have you ever put your exercises to the test either in actuality or even computer modeled it in a situation where all of the telecommunications was down, where there was no electricity, where

none of the public services were working, when many of the rescue

people themselves could not—I mean, you put all of that in play

and I wonder how any city would respond to something like this.

In the exercises you have done, have you done this without the use

of telecommunications?

Ms. PERETT. Sir, we did it quite some time ago, not to the scale

that we do exercises now. It has been a very long time since we

have basically tried to do what I would call a manual operation.

But I would like to go back to the Incident Command System and

the Standardized Emergency Management System. Those are such

well-defined response structures with such common terminology

and protocol that it will serve somebody well out in the field and

they will be able to operate as a component under the Incident

Command System and do their job. And that can be going on in

many places when you have a well-defined and orchestrated system

in place. So although I think you presented huge challenges for us

with your very question, I do believe it is possible to function, each

cell, so to speak, being independent until such time as they can be

brought together.

Mr. STANLEY. Sir, if you noticed the TV this week, we did that

exercise earlier this week when we lost all power in the city of Los

Angeles. We only lost it briefly, we only lost it for an hour, and we

actually had our Emergency Operations Center activated as we

were dealing with a resettlement plan for the victims of Hurricane

Katrina. But it did allow us to assess whether our backup generation power worked, where we might need additional backup generation, how the communication elements played, how the 4,000-plus

traffic lights in the city interacted, those that were automatic,

those that had to be dealt with manually, etc., at a time when we

were in a position to do a very good assessment and then go back

now and see what we need to do to fill those gaps.

Mr. BOBB. We had a large-scale exercise in the National Capital

Region several months ago that took down the entire transportation system. So we did exercise a worst case scenario with respect to our transportation system. We have not conducted an exercise wherein all of our power, etc. would be out. But what we have

done on the communications side is we have purchased throughout

the region large caches of radios, interoperable radios for our first

responders so that we would be able to communicate in the event

the telephone, other communications systems are down.

Mr. ROBERTSON. One additional point is that the RICS communication system that we use to support our decisionmakers in this

region has a built-in redundancy in that we not only have facilities

in the District, but in Fairfax County, VA, Montgomery County,

MD, the Maryland State Emergency Agency in Reisterstown, MD,

and then the Virginia Emergency Management Agency in Virginia.

So that if there were an emergency or incident that took one or any

down, there is going to be that backup capacity to make sure that

you do not lack the key decisionmaking communication at a time

when it is most needed.

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Mr. CARPER. That type of scenario that you outline is something

that we faced repeatedly last year in Florida during all the hurricanes. During Hurricane Frances, for instances, we had an evacuation for over 300,000 people just in Broward County alone and

there were over 500,000 people without power, our telecommunications systems were severely impacted and we had to provide

work-around. So there is experience at that level.

Mr. CASTILLO. For us in Miami-Dade, part of what we learned

from Andrew is the need, because the south end of the county was

separated in part through communications, just the lack of communications, we decentralized our decisionmaking process and allowed

for some autonomy if there is no communications, primarily in the

fire and emergency services, to be able to work independently if

needed, but as soon as possible be part of the main system.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. If the Chair would indulge me just one more

question, because I think it is the question that most of America

wants to know. It is this. We all sat in frustration, in fact, somebody said at one of our briefings, I think a member of the cabinet

said the problem was we were all looking through the same soda

straw and we saw the same particular things, particularly at the

Convention Center and at the Astrodome. And one of my colleagues

said, well that may well be true, but everybody that had a television set in the world was looking through that same soda straw.

And it reminded me of something that used to be in the Union Pacific Railroad Engineers Manual. It said that if two trains should

approach each other on the same track, both shall come to a complete stop and neither shall advance until the other is passed. Literally, for 3 days we watched as it seemed like no one was getting

the needed supplies of water and things into the people there.

Just from your experience, and this is not about fault-finding but

we have to make sure this never happens again, particularly here

in the United States, what should have happened then? Was that

ultimately the Federal Government’s responsibility, the State’s responsibility, the local government responsibility? How do we make

sure that does not happen again?

Mr. SHAYS. I think what we will do is we will leave that question

open because it would take another 5 minutes to respond to it. But

I will ask that question in my time if we do not get an answer before then.

We will go now to Mr. Owens. We are being a little more generous with the time because we have so many people to respond to

the questions.

Mr. OWENS. I apologize if my questions are redundant but I want

to make sure it is on the record. Do you all have systems in place

now where there is standardized communication between the first

responders, where the firemen can talk to the policemen and the

police can talk to the firemen on the same radio frequencies? Can

we assume that is a fait accompli in all of your areas?

Mr. BOBB. Yes.

Mr. OWENS. Is there anybody who does not have that? Because

I am not certain New York City has it even now after losing so

many firemen in September 11th. I am almost certain that they do

not have it yet completed between the firemen and the police. In

D.C., you have Park Police, Capitol Police, D.C. Police, Secret ServVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:50 Jan 18, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00198 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24205.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ice, etc. Are they all on the same radio frequency? Can they all

communicate with each other?

Mr. ROBERTSON. Let me just add one point to that. I am from the

Washington Council of Governments. The one point I would make

is with the Federal funds that were made available to this region

we purchased I believe 1,000 interoperable radios that have been

cached in various parts of the region and have been regularly made

available, basically dispatched to first responders so that every jurisdiction can have that level of intercommunications.

Mr. OWENS. So you can say authoritatively that they can communicate with each other, D.C. Police, Park Police, Capitol Police, Secret Service, etc.? Or you do not know?

Mr. ROBERTSON. When they are using the interoperable radios

they certainly can.

Mr. OWENS. They all have purchased the interoperable radios?

Mr. ROBERTSON. They all have access, yes.

Mr. OWENS. Does anybody else want to comment?

Mr. BOBB. We have about 1,250 800 megahertz radios and we

have those cached in different parts of the region. Those radios

gives us an opportunity to provide those to all of those law enforcement agencies over which they can, in fact, speak to each other.

Mr. OWENS. Has the Department of Homeland Security taken

any steps to standardize communications, vehicles, mechanisms

across the country? Are they moving in that direction? I can buy

a light bulb in New York and know that if I screw it in in California it is going to work. Any electric appliance bought anywhere in

this country, you can know that if you plug it in it is going to work.

So is it so difficult to get standardized communication equipment?

Are we on our way to some kind of national standardized version

of all this equipment, so that if you may be called upon to help in

some other area your radio equipment works? In New Orleans, it

seems they did not have any equipment at all at one point; nobody

could communicate with anybody, which is most shocking. But anyway, is there any movement in that direction that you know of to

standardize it so that across the country first responders, people in

emergency situations can talk to each other?

Mr. BOBB. I am not aware of any standardization that would

place a D.C. first responder on the same frequency as one in California wherein we can talk back and forth.

Mr. OWENS. You do not know of any workshops, forums, anything underway by Homeland Security to reach this goal?

Mr. CARPER. In the actual National Preparedness Goal for Homeland Security there are requirements for interoperability that most

of the funding streams that have grants related are requiring that

type of interoperability to occur. Now are they there yet?

Mr. OWENS. That is mandated?

Mr. CARPER. That is a standard and that is required. But are we

there yet? I would think for most jurisdictions, no.

Mr. OWENS. Thank you.

Ms. PERETT. Sir, may I comment also. I just wanted to tell you

that in Los Angeles County we have a Regional Tactical Communications System and it does include the sheriff, the Association of

Fire Chiefs, the Association of Police Chiefs, LAPD, L.A. City fire,

L.A. County fire, Department of Health Services, the California

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Highway Patrol, and Federal representation, the U.S. Secret Service. What we are doing right now——

Mr. OWENS. Did you mention firemen?

Ms. PERETT. Did I mention firemen? Yes, sir. We have a crosstalk capability and we also have a mobil unit that can actually go

out and patch together communications now. I would liken it to the

Volkswagen—we would like to have a Cadillac to do this but we

have a Volkswagen and it does work and they are able to communicate with each other.

Mr. OWENS. On first responders, do you have first responders?

And I again want to salute the first responders in New Orleans because they were in a situation where if they lived in the city, and

it looked like the majority did live in the city, their families were

involved in the catastrophe and most of them kept working. I want

to salute them. But if you had a similar catastrophe in New York,

most of the first responders do not live in the city of New York.

Do you think it is fair to ask that first responders live no more

than 30 minutes away from their assignment?

Mr. BOBB. When we look at the lessons learned thus far from

New Orleans, one of the things we are doing as part of our planning going forward is to ensure that the first responders’ families

are in fact taken care of, such that our first responders can then

take care of literally thousands of other people.

Mr. OWENS. Do you have a city requirement that people live

within the boundaries of the city who are first responders, firemen

and the police?

Mr. BOBB. No, we do not.

Mr. OWENS. So they may live more than an hour away?

Mr. BOBB. We do not have a residency requirement for our first

responders in the District of Columbia. But part of our plan is that

we will have X number of persons available to us in the event of

an emergency. But we do not have a residency requirement.

Mr. OWENS. Los Angeles, do you have one?

Mr. STANLEY. No, we do not have a residency requirement for

our first responders.

Mr. OWENS. Is this not a built in weakness that stands out in

terms of first responders that we depend on to be first responders?

If they are not there, how can they respond?

Mr. STANLEY. As Mr. Bobb indicated, we do have those that are

on shift and working and we know what the capabilities are there

and we know how to get people in. Sometimes, depending on the

nature of the disaster, they actually respond better from outside.

So it is not a one size fits all.

Mr. OWENS. They respond better from outside despite traffic

jams and so forth?

Mr. STANLEY. Well, we have ways of getting them in. That is

why, as Ms. Perett was talking about, we reach out and liaison

with other jurisdictions we assist in getting those resources into

the area that is needed.

Mr. OWENS. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. The gentleman’s time is expired. I thank you.

I think of Los Angeles as so big that, heck, everybody would have

to live in Los Angeles.

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Mr. Van Hollen, I am going to give you the floor, but I would

first ask unanimous consent that the testimony of the People for

the Ethical Treatment of Animals [PETA], presented by Daphna

Nachminovitch, director, Domestic Animal and Wildlife Rescue and

Information, be submitted for the record. And without objection, so

ordered.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Van Hollen, you have the floor.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all

again for your testimony.

I think we all know that the best laid plans can sometimes go

awry when you are actually in a particular situation. The best way

to test that is to, as best we can, have simulations. Obviously, we

can never simulate the exact thing, but at least in terms of the

first responders, we can do so through exercises for preparedness.

So I hope going forward that will be something that all of our jurisdictions around the country, especially those most at risk, prepare

for.

Let me just ask the gentleman from the District of Columbia, Mr.

Bobb, first of all with respect to the communications systems. Are

your communications systems all interoperable with, for example,

the National Guard if they were to come in? I mean, how far down

the line does the interoperability work?

Mr. BOBB. What we did in the National Capital Region is we purchased a cache of radios that are interoperable and those radios,

in the event of a major disaster, will be distributed to our first responders and they will be able to communicate. And those radio

caches are located in two separate areas throughout the National

Capital Region. Our goal is that we can get those radios to our first

responders within 2 hours.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Robertson, there was a meeting, as you

know, of COG yesterday, you testified about that, it was reported

in today’s paper about how the National area would organize differently possibly based on lessons learned from Katrina. And the

statements were that, you know, FEMA’s response was so disastrous in the Katrina area that we could not rely in any way on

FEMA going forward. Can you comment on what is coming out of

COG these days, and I do not know if there was consensus within

COG about how to move forward.

Mr. ROBERTSON. I think there is some consensus from COG on

how to move forward. And I think some of the other panelists

touched on it best, in that when there is an emergency or incident

the local folks are the first responders, the incident commanders.

If that capacity is overwhelmed, Federal and State resources trigger in or cascade in at the appropriate levels. What the Council of

Governments is planning to do, working with the local, State, Federal, and in many cases the private sector partners, is to re-examine the plans, assess whether or not those requirements are being

fully met against perhaps the scenarios that perhaps were not considered previously.

A lot of the emergency exercises and incidents that we have had

in our region have looked at a number of incidents, oftentimes terrorism, and we have seen some real life examples with Hurricane

Isabel in our region. But as we have seen in New Orleans, there

is the capacity to have something that is truly catastrophic that not

only taxes the ability of one jurisdiction but surrounding jurisdictions. We do not have that mutual aid capacity in a place like New

Orleans that you would have in an area such as the Washington

area where, for example, in Arlington County on September 11th

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gional situation where there was just a breakdown of the ability to

support that.

What we propose to do is not necessarily to assume that the

plans in place are no longer valid, but to test those, remeasure

those, recalibrate those aligned with the new expectations. If there

are situations, as some have said, that FEMA may not be able to

provide support as quickly or as comprehensively as possible, then

that is something folks need to know and account for. I think the

effort, and this came out certainly in so many of the statements

earlier today, is that it is the expectation to improve FEMA and

to make sure that they can provide that level of support that the

localities and the States are looking for.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Let me just say I think the lessons learned

from Katrina are where FEMA’s response was inadequate. We need

to obviously beef up FEMA. There are some kind of events that are

so catastrophic that they do overwhelm the ability of State and

local officials to respond, where you need national assets, you need

the National Guard. I am sure as COG moves forward, and this is

obviously the National Capital Region, we have a huge Federal

presence, they are going to be involved in disaster response and

that coordination is critical.

Let me just ask you before my time is up. There is a proposal

by Secretary Chertoff, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, to rearrange the position of what is now the regional

coordinator within the department for the National Capital response. Right now, he reports to the Secretary. They would have

him reporting to an Under Secretary. We have heard with respect

to Katrina about the layers of bureaucracy slowing things down.

This would put the person within the DHS who is responsible for

the National Capital Region under one more layer of bureaucracy.

I do not know, first, if are you aware of the proposal, and second,

do you have concerns about their proposal and its implications?

Mr. ROBERTSON. Certainly, the Council of Governments was one

of those agencies that called for and was grateful for the support

of our delegation to have this special office. There are now two

folks that have had that position. They are very much part of our

regional planning process at all levels in our National Capital Region.

And we look to that office particularly to help marshal the Federal family, to make sure the many Federal agencies and resources

are applied to our region and speak with as much as possible one

voice. So we certainly would want that office to be as strong in support of our National Capital Region as possible. Many of our officials at the local and State level have raised some questions about

that particular action.

Mr. BOBB. Our views are pretty strong in that regard. That is,

this office is critical to the coordination of all of the Federal resources and in time of disaster helping to coordinate the Federal

assets that would be available. To have that position report to

someone other than the Secretary I think diminishes the power,

the authority, the position’s ability to influence other Federal agencies. So from our perspective, we think it diminishes the strength

of the National Capital Region as opposed to uplifting it and giving

us the ability to coordinate with other entities.

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much. Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As the world watched

the disaster of Hurricane Katrina unfold in New Orleans, one of

the most heard comments by people on the street, by the emergency responders, and even former FEMA officials was where is

the Federal Government?

The head of FEMA, Michael Brown testified before Congress in

2003 and he said that he was taking steps ‘‘to ensure that FEMA’s

disaster teams could respond anywhere in the country within 12

hours and could deliver equipment and supplies within 24 hours.’’

A quote from former FEMA Director Michael Brown.

But in New Orleans, tragically, it took more than 3 days. The

mayor of New Orleans issued a desperate SOS for Federal assistance. The head of the Office of Emergency Preparedness publicly

begged for troops, food, water, please come, please help. And a

former FEMA official wondered publicly what in the world was

going on.

I would like to get the perspective of the local officials here today

on what you saw in New Orleans. I would like to start with Mr.

Carper. Were you surprised at how long it took FEMA to respond?

Mr. CARPER. I believe there are three things that happened. One

was, there was certainly a lack of adequate planning for the scope

of the emergency; two, there was a lack of resources to respond to

it; and three, there was just not enough on the ground soon

enough. Looking at the whole system, it was disappointing to see

FEMA respond in as much as we have planned for these catastrophic events time and time again and knowing that you are

going to need these overwhelming amount of resources on the

ground quickly. We saw this in Hurricane Andrew where it took a

while to ramp up. But once the military got on the ground, things

began to stabilize. And that is just the way it works in the largescale events.

Mrs. MALONEY. But when did the military get on the ground?

Mr. CARPER. After Andrew, it was several days.

Mrs. MALONEY. Several days. They were on the ground that

night in New York. When I went back to New York—they blew up

our emergency headquarters, they created another one, military

was there, FEMA was there, everyone was there, and we moved

forward.

The former FEMA Director under President Reagan, General Julius Beckton, Jr., and he served from 1975 to 1989, he said Secretary Chertoff ‘‘does not have a full appreciation for what the

country is faced with, nor does anyone who waits that long.’’

I want to go back to one of the biggest lessons learned from September 11th and it has been mentioned here today, we have had

hearings on it, a number of us have had bipartisan legislation on

it, and that is the communications system. They were warned that

this was coming. Yet in September 11th one of the biggest tragedies is that the police and fire could not communicate. We know

that hundreds of firefighters could have been saved if we could

have communicated. Congress appropriated money to the Justice

Department to find appropriate technology and to sponsor coordination. The National Institute of Justice has sponsored many meetings, funded projects. And we saw in Hurricane Katrina they reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:50 Jan 18, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00209 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24205.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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sorted to the ancient Greek’s method of running by foot from one

place to another to give them information. I just want to ask you

about this. Just from the lesson in September 11th, our phones

were down, no one could communicate, and they asked a number

of us get us phones from the military, from the Federal Government, and in a bipartisan way we had phones down the next day

so people could communicate. Yet it was days and days and days—

I do not even know if they can communicate now. Have they gotten

the government walkie-talkies or are they still using the ancient

Greek way of running around with messages. Do you know, Mr.

Carper?

Mr. CARPER. From my experience, what happens is that you

begin bringing in mobil towers and mobil handsets of things of that

nature, especially in an area that may have not had these resources at their disposal generally in some areas in and around the

New Orleans area. Those are the types of things that they are

doing at this particular point.

Mrs. MALONEY. But at the warning of Katrina, which was a serious storm and all the warnings, should they not have gotten that

equipment down there knowing that the phones were not going to

operate and were not going to be coordinated with the various police, fire, and other emergency workers. Is that not a natural reaction?

Mr. CARPER. Ideally, yes.

Mrs. MALONEY. My time is up.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you. Mr. Shays.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you all very, very much for being here. I

would love a quick answer to your response when you saw the tragedy. Were you saying, my God. Thank God I am not the one. Or

were you thinking, boy, if they had only done this. Do you get the

gist of my question? Were you just riveted, saying what lessons can

I learn? Because I have heard questions here we cannot learn from

you and I am learning a lot from you. Even without knowing everything, you did see breakdowns and you must have said I am going

to do something different. So just tell me your reaction, and maybe

tell me something you think, my gosh, we better check up on a little better. Just a lesson you learned just watching this. We will

start with you, Ms. Perett.

Ms. PERETT. Thank you. I had a couple of those feelings. First

of all, I was heavily involved in the Northridge earthquake response and having lived through that. And at the time, it was the

largest natural disaster in U.S. history and it was grueling and agonizing. And it pales in comparison.

Mr. SHAYS. I need you to answer my question. I only have 6 minutes here.

Ms. PERETT. I am so sorry. Yes, I felt, oh, my God, I am glad it

is somewhere else and not me. And then second, I was utterly appalled at the lack of support for the victims.

Mr. SHAYS. And did you place that on local, State, or Federal, or

all three?

Ms. PERETT. I was not in a position to judge that. But a lesson

from the whole thing? I think we need to take a much closer look

at our vulnerable populations and our economically disadvantaged

populations to make sure we are taking care of them.

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Mr. SHAYS. I do not want you to punt on that one. Did you feel

like that would have been your responsibility at the local level to

take care of these folks?

Ms. PERETT. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Mr. Stanley.

Mr. STANLEY. Yes, I do believe it was our responsibility at the

local level. One of the things that I saw immediately is that with

the first load and quick load of water and food into the shelters is

to get some radios so they could actually communicate and know

what is going on. The world was hearing everything. They had no

information and that just adds to the stress of the incident.

Mr. SHAYS. So you learned a lesson from this?

Mr. STANLEY. Absolutely.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Bobb.

Mr. BOBB. I guess a quick lesson for me, knowing that area really well, is what was the mayor’s authority to in fact execute the

emergency declarations and then to take actions pursuant to that

to save people and to seize assets if necessary.

Mr. SHAYS. Implicit in your comment is you need someone truly

in charge, no doubts, no questions, you can turn to, you can get authority from him or her who is the chief executive and you can go

using their name if they have the authority. Am I reading too

much?

Mr. BOBB. No, you are not. It is like take the emergency declaration, you know there is an emergency heading your way, it is going

to happen, execute, put your emergency powers in place immediately.

Mr. SHAYS. And know who is in charge.

Mr. BOBB. Yes.

Mr. ROBERTSON. I think a quick initial lesson learned is the difficulty and the confusion of supporting the initial evacuees in

places like the Superdome and other areas, the breakdown in the

ability to support them with food, shelter, and basic law and order.

Mr. SHAYS. I cannot imagine a local official though sending folks

to a facility like the Superdome without water, without food, without police protection, without backup electricity. That is kind of a

basic thing. You would not do that, right, at least you like to think

you would not?

Mr. ROBERTSON. That is pretty basic, yes.

Mr. CARPER. Certainly, what you have outlined in terms of my

reaction, I was absolutely horrified. And also being a student of

hurricanes, I was telling myself this is going to be one of the worst

case scenarios for a hurricane impact. And I think that was selfevident a day or so out before the storm hit. I just thought to myself they are going to need to mobilize everything they have as

quickly as they can get it there.

Mr. SHAYS. And what did it tell you about what you need to do?

Mr. CARPER. It makes me want to re-examine it as to what we

can expect in the immediate aftermath and how long do our assumptions about relief, when are they valid. And that is what we

will certainly take a look at.

Mr. SHAYS. Chief.

Mr. CASTILLO. For us, Hurricane Katrina, we got sort of the

warm-up punch. It affected Miami-Dade before it crossed the State

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and went into the Gulf. I remember thinking the same feeling that

we had, although we knew Katrina was going to be a Category 1,

with the same feeling we had when we were watching Andrew barrel toward us and knowing that it was going to be a major impact.

You clearly go through all the plans that you have. You second

guess yourself on did you do everything possible that you had in

your plans and did not have in your plans, and ask for as much

assistance as you could? The fact the magnitude of what was to be

expected would cause me to question myself just to make sure that

we did everything.

Mr. SHAYS. With the last minute I have, not all of you because

we would not have time, but let me ask this question: Please tell

me how reliant your locality has been on the National Guard during an emergency event you have experienced. Did you have sufficient manpower and equipment and other resources for your needs?

Really what I am asking is this, is there any doubt that you need

the National Guard? The National Guard is basically under the jurisdiction of the Governor. It is not the Reserves, it is not the

Army. Is there any doubt that it is under the jurisdiction of the

Governor?

Mr. CASTILLO. I can tell you for us, the State of Florida, after

having been hit so many times last year, has done a lot to increase

the State’s level of preparedness at the same time we were. We received a lot of assistance through the State with the National

Guard for us to help especially in the south end of the county with

water and ice delivery.

Mr. SHAYS. The National Guard is the militia. Do you view the

National Guard as being a State resource or as a Federal resource?

Mr. BOBB. In the case of the District of Columbia, it is a Federal

resource.

Mr. SHAYS. In that case, clearly. For the others?

Ms. PERETT. It is a State resource. And we used it quite a bit

during the Northridge earthquake and during the civil unrest.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you. Mr. Lynch.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. While I certainly think

that this panel has suffered enough, I cannot resist just one last

question. Given the fact that the local government in this case, because of the breach of the levee, was suddenly under 18 feet of

water or 22 feet of water with the surge, if they were here, let us

turn it around, sort of what Mr. Shays was asking but I would like

to turn it around. Since the officials on the ground and responsible

in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast are not here, you all do

have relevant and important experience that we can learn from.

What questions would you ask the folks who were on the ground

in control or certainly with positions of authority when Katrina

was coming and after it had struck. If we could just go right down

the line. What questions do you think were very important to ask?

Because eventually we hope to have people from New Orleans and

Mississippi and also Alabama here at some point to ask them what

did go wrong.

Ms. PERETT. Let me make sure I understand your question.

What we would ask of those officials, or what should have those

officials been asking?

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Mr. LYNCH. If you were trying to get to the root of what actually

went wrong, lessons learned, the title of this hearing, what would

you ask the folks who were in charge on the ground, whether State,

Federal, or local?

Ms. PERETT. I think I would ask them if they had in place in advance a well-understood protocol for how the local city level was

going to get resources from its next level of government, and how

that next level of government was going to get resources. And then,

in turn, did they know how to bring them back down and integrate

them.

Mr. LYNCH. OK. Even if they are under 18 feet of water?

Ms. PERETT. That makes it hard. But I still think that is what

I would want to know.

Mr. STANLEY. I would ask if they were here if they planned for

the worst case scenario of what was the problems in the implementation of that plan.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you.

Mr. BOBB. I would ask the same question, why you did not implement your worst case scenario. You had a hurricane coming, it has

crossed Florida at Category 1, it enters the Gulf of Mexico, the

warm water of the Gulf is like fuel for a hurricane, it has been predicted you are going to get a Category 4, potentially a Category 5,

plan for the worst, put the worst scenario plan in place, and then

hope for the best.

Mr. LYNCH. Especially with the levee situation. I used to live in

New Orleans, actually in Metairie, but worked at the Shell Oil refinery in Norco. This is back more than 20 years ago and they were

worried about the levee back then. So it is not exactly a surprise

to people that the structure, being as old as it was, that there was

a breach in the face of a Category 4.

I am sorry. Mr. Robertson.

Mr. ROBERTSON. Just a variation on what has already been said.

What level of information was available to them when they made

the decisions that they did?

Mr. LYNCH. Do you mean were they watching the Weather Channel?

Mr. ROBERTSON. Well, that would help. But certainly what level

of information they had, because there are decisions that are going

to be made that are going to be triggered by a certain level of information and information exchange. And perhaps that information

exchange did not happen.

Mr. LYNCH. OK. Thank you. Mr. Carper.

Mr. CARPER. Certainly that is a very good point there. Also, what

their plan was in responding to the situational awareness. And also

what the chronology of events were and who was talking to who

in terms of the local to the State and the State to the Feds, and

how was that being documented and what the responses were.

That type of thing.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, Mr. Carper. Chief.

Mr. CASTILLO. When they were under 18 feet of water, if I had

the opportunity to ask them, if they could ask for and receive anything they wanted, what three things would they have asked for?

I assume the first one would have been a boat, obviously. But what

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other things could they have asked for if they could receive anything they wanted at that time.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much. I just want to

thank this panel. I know it has been a long day for you. We very

much appreciate your testimony, your responding to our questions.

It has been very helpful for the inquiry. Thank you very much.

We will take a 1-minute recess as we move to our next panel.

[Recess.]

Chairman TOM DAVIS. The committee will be in order.

We have with us Dr. John R. Harrald, the professor of engineering management at the George Washington University, and he is

the director for the Institute of Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management; and Dr. James J. Carafano, who is a senior research fellow

at the Heritage Foundation. Thank you both for your patience in

staying with us. If you would rise please for the administration of

the oath.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Dr. Harrald, we will start with you, and

then to Dr. Carafano. You have heard a lot of the comments today.

If you can stay within the 5-minutes, great, but it is just us. And

we appreciate you being here.

STATEMENTS OF JOHN R. HARRALD, PROFESSOR OF ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY AND DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE FOR CRISIS, DISASTER,

AND RISK MANAGEMENT; AND JAMES J. CARAFANO, SENIOR

FELLOW FOR NATIONAL SECURITY AND HOMELAND SECURITY, HERITAGE FOUNDATION

STATEMENT OF JOHN R. HARRALD

Dr. HARRALD. My written comments have been submitted. And

I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to testify. As you

stated, I am the director of the Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and

Risk Management at George Washington University. I will preface

my remarks by saying I have not been down to New Orleans but

my colleagues have.

Two of my colleagues are the medical officers for both the Montgomery County and Fairfax County Urban Search and Rescue

Teams. We work closely with the American Red Cross and one of

my colleagues is directing chapter operations in Pascagoula, MI.

We are monitoring the operations here but also keeping in touch

with what is going on down on the ground.

We can explain much of what we have witnessed during the last

21⁄2 weeks but we cannot accept that this is the best that we can

do. In Louisiana and Mississippi the heroic efforts of many men

and women were not enough to compensate for the breakdown of

our national response system.

In order to understand the lessons from the failed initial response to Hurricane Katrina and to use this knowledge to improve

the preparedness of other metropolitan areas at risk, we must be

able to separate systemic failures from issues of individual preparedness and competence. Did we choose the wrong strategies,

structures, and policies, or was this just a failure to professionally

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and competently execute? I believe if we ignore the systemic issues

and simply replace people or reassign responsibilities, we may simply fail again in the not too distant future with a different cast of

characters.

Prediction, planning, preparation, capacity, and capability are all

essential if we are to avoid catastrophic consequences from a natural or technological disaster or a terrorist attack. We have done

well with prediction, a scientific and technological task. We have

also done reasonably well with the bureaucratic task of producing

emergency plans.

We have however, in my opinion, confused preparing the Government with preparing the society at large. We have identified the

problems we will solve and the capabilities we will need to respond

to and recover from catastrophic events, but we have failed to

make the investments and take the actions necessary to build this

capacity and capability.

Appropriate scenarios have been used as the basis for Federal,

State, and local catastrophic incident planning. As an example, the

Catastrophic Incident Annex to the National Response Plan published by the Department of Homeland Security has clear assumptions. It assumes, for example, a catastrophic incident may cause

significant disruption of the area’s critical infrastructure, such as

energy, transportation, telecommunications, and public health and

medical systems.

All of these infrastructure were lost in New Orleans. It assumes

the response capabilities and resources of the local jurisdictions

may be insufficient and quickly overwhelmed. Local emergency

management personnel who normally respond to incidents may be

among those most affected and unable to perform their duties. In

New Orleans, the leaders, emergency managers, and first responders and their families were, indeed, victims. The police and firefighters that responded were themselves homeless and were not reinforced by State and Federal resources for days.

The plan assumes a detailed and credible common operating picture may not be achievable for 24 to 48 hours, or longer. As a result, response activities must begin without the benefit of a detailed or complete situation and critical needs assessment. The failure to obtain the situational awareness during Katrina is well documented, as is the failure to act creatively and quickly based on

incomplete information. The total breakdown of emergency communications was a key part of this failure.

Federal support must be provided in a timely manner, the plan

assumes, to save lives, prevent human suffering, and mitigate severe damage. This may require mobilizing and deploying assets before they are requested via normal National Response Plan protocols. FEMA did, in fact, coordinate a massive mobilization effort.

The need to actually deploy and execute assets, other than the

search and rescue teams, was apparently not recognized.

The plan assumes that a catastrophic incident has unique dimensions, characteristics requiring that response plans and strategies

be flexible enough to effectively assess emerging needs and requirements. The Department of Homeland Security has spent years developing a common national approach to incident management, at

the direction of the President, through the creation of the National

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Response Plan, the National Incident Management System, and

the National Preparedness Goals that have been mentioned by others. Did this emphasis on structure and process diminish our ability to react creatively and adaptively?

The scale and scope of Hurricane Katrina is, in fact, unprecedented. However, as we have heard in the previous panel, other

metropolitan areas are at risk to similar catastrophic scenarios. We

have worked with a number, as I have stated in my written comments, a number of these localities.

I believe that the examination of the preparation for and response to Hurricane Katrina is a critical national issue. An independent and expert review must assist us to:

Focus our efforts on reducing the vulnerability of those in harm’s

way in our major cities at risk; improve our ability to warn and to

communicate, to identify and meet the immediate needs of potential victims following a catastrophic event; improve the agility, the

mobility, the capacity, the self-sufficiency, and creativity of our National Emergency Management System; provide an integrated national approach to mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery; provide resources and information to elected and appointed officials to enable them to become better managers of extreme

events. It is not just the emergency management community, as we

have seen, that gets involved in these events, it is all appointed

and all elected leaders. Where do they get the skill set to do that?

And to recognize that social and economic recovery requires a

strategy for housing our citizens and recovering the local and regional economy.

Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Harrald follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Dr. Carafano.

STATEMENT OF JAMES J. CARAFANO

Dr. CARAFANO. Well, the President was absolutely correct when

he said that the national response to Katrina was inadequate. And

I think Americans certainly have the right to ask hard questions:

what happened, why it happened, who is responsible, what can be

done better. I think it is premature to answer all those questions.

I think this committee can play an incredibly important role

though in providing a framework for conducting that assessment

and in assessing how far we have come as a Nation in preparedness since September 11th.

Just four points on context which I think are important to establish when we do this evaluation.

The first is scope. This is unprecedented. Over a million people

at risk, 90,000 square miles. I think we have to have a realistic discussion of over how quickly and how soon you could get resources

in, and how come we were so successful at saving hundreds and

hundreds of thousands of lives during the event.

The second is I think there needs to be a clear distinction made

in the character. There are two different kinds of disasters. There

is the normal disaster, what the chiefs talked about, where you

have this cascading of resources of local, State, and Federal, and

normally massive Federal aid does not show up for days.

Catastrophic disasters are totally different in character. Tens or

hundreds of thousands of lives are immediately at risk, and, more

importantly, the State and local capacity is virtually wiped out. So

you have created this 72-hour gap that you have to fill that you do

not have to do in a normal disaster.

The other point I would make is everybody needs to understand

that we got what we paid for. Since September 11th, we have been

investing a lot of money. Most of it, virtually all of it has gone into

building up for normal disasters. Very little of it has gone in to preparing for catastrophic disasters. Everybody wanted a piece of the

pie, everybody wanted grants, everybody wanted something. So

they gave money to New Orleans and now it is under 6 feet of

water. So we have not been preparing for this kind of disaster.

And the final point is the one thing we know already that

Katrina tells us is this Nation is not prepared for a catastrophic

disaster. The irony is that in the area where we are least prepared,

which is medical preparedness for a catastrophic disaster, the system was not stressed here. So our greatest weakness was not even

apparent in this really terrible exercise.

You asked me to look at what State and local governments are

doing now to deal with this kind of thing. There are three major

points I would like to make that we know already. Federalism

works. I think it is the best system. This notion of who is in charge

was the problem, I think, is bogus. The mayor is in charge of the

city, the Governor is in charge of the State, the President is in

charge of the Nation. There is one thing we should not do—we

should never change that balance of leadership and responsibility.

The second is virtually every city in this country has built an allhazards response system. We build one system. If it is a fire, you

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send a fire truck; if it is an explosion, you send a fire truck; if it

is a terrorist attack, you send a fire truck. That is the right system

and the one thing we should never sacrifice is our all-hazards approach.

The third is preparedness at the community level really has to

be a bottom-up driven exercise. The research on this is very, very

clear and strong. If the members of the community are not strongly

involved in doing these plans and preparing, the plans are just not

effective. Quite frankly, most of the communities in the United

States are top-down. Emergency managers say this is what we are

going to do. But the best plans and the most successful plans are

the ones that start and build bottom-up.

There are things the Federal Government can do right now to

help. I would just like to list those very quickly.

Secretary Chertoff released a Second Stage Review. He talked

about spinning off the FEMA office as an independent agency in

the Department, eliminating the layer of bureaucracy, consolidating all the preparedness activities in under secretaries so the

States and local governments really do have a one-stop-shop. I

think that is exactly right and I think Congress should support

that.

The House has passed an excellent bill, the Faster and Smarter

First Responders bill to make the grant system focus spending on

national priorities rather than just frittering it around the country

like we have been. I hope in conference with the Senate that the

strong leadership that the House has shown in this area prevails

and it becomes law.

The Homeland Security Act of 2002 required DHS to set up a regional framework. That still has not happened. I really, truly believe that if we had this regional framework in place it would have

helped in coordination with the mayors and Governors and it would

have alleviated a lot of problems we experienced. That is simply

unconscionable. It needs to be fixed.

We need to reorganize the National Guard. Everybody acknowledges the National Guard is important. But the National Guard of

the United States is not structured today to close the 72-hour gap.

It is not structured to get there in under 24 hours and provide

massive amounts of aid. And if we want the National Guard to respond to catastrophic disasters, we are simply going to have to

structure it differently than it is now.

Finally, I will just finish with this. The Federal Government

should really be focusing on two things. Only the Federal Government can mobilize a national system to respond to catastrophic disasters.

So No. 1, the Federal Government should be building the national response system. And where it should be giving money to

States and focusing its resources with them, it should be on the

things that help build that system that allows State and local governments to plug into that system, and those things are training,

education, planning, information sharing, interoperable communications, and intelligence.

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ment should be spending Federal dollars on preparing Federal assets to respond to catastrophic terrorism.

I will just finish with this very quickly. Everybody has talked

about interoperable communication. The Coast Guard, in its Deep

Water modernization program calls for building a medium cutter.

The Coast Guard saved 33,000 people. It was the only people that

could have provided an integrated air picture, an integrated air

command and control in Katrina.

But you know what? That medium cutter is not off the ground yet. We are not building it. This House voted to cut $200 million

from the Coast Guard’s modernization budget. So we are all

screaming at interoperable communications and in the one area

where the Federal Government could step in and could help, they

have undercut their own ability to respond and do their mission.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Carafano follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much. You got a lot in

there.

Dr. CARAFANO. I am a New Yorker, we talk quick.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Let me ask a fundamental organizational

question. Dr. Carafano, you allude to it in your written statement,

and that is the role of FEMA. As you know, this Congress took

FEMA out of being a direct report to the President and put it in

the Department of Homeland Security as part of the Homeland Security Act.

You can argue I guess whether we did the right thing or the

wrong thing. It seems to me that whoever is in FEMA ought to

have that direct pipeline to the White House. That is what is important. If there is an emergency, people on the ground should not

have to have go-betweens where they can get the call. Because

there are calls on this thing nationalizing this that can only come

from the White House. Is this an organizational problem? What is

your reaction to that last question?

Dr. CARAFANO. I do not think so. Quite frankly, I think if we had

left FEMA out, then FEMA still would have failed because it could

not draw on a national response system that could mobilize this

kind of response. And then we would be sitting here saying, oh, the

problem was we did not put FEMA in DHS, and gee, if we had just

done that, it would have all been better.

I do not think it is an organizational issue. I think, quite frankly,

it is a bogus issue. The National Response Plan clearly has the

means for FEMA to talk directly to the President. The notion that

the Director of FEMA cannot call up the President in the middle

of a crisis and get what he needs I think is silly.

I think FEMA is way better off inside DHS. There are thousands

of people now in DHS who are mobilized in support of FEMA. If

it were a little tiny separate agency, as it was before, it would not

be able to turn around immediately and draw on those assets. The

Secretary of Homeland Security has one of the largest Federal

agencies in this country. He has a lot of horsepower that he can

draw on and bring in in support of FEMA.

I think the Secretary fixed the problem. He had an unnecessary

layer of bureaucracy by creating an Under Secretary over FEMA.

He said let us strip that away, create an independent agency and

have FEMA focus on FEMA’s primary core competency and primary mission, which is exactly this. Every day the FEMA Director

should get up and think about what am I going to do when the

next Katrina strikes?

And then what he said, and I thought this was brilliant, he said

to take all the preparedness stuff out of FEMA, which really has

nothing to do with responding to Katrina, which is really administrative stuff—it is planning, it is prep stuff, it is going to meetings,

it is eating donuts—and said let us consolidate all that in one place

with the critical infrastructure, preparedness, with the grants and

have one guy do that in an Under Secretary so the FEMA guy can

concentrate on FEMA.

And the model for this, the military has exactly the right model

for this. The combatant commander in CINCOM is fighting the war

in CINCOM; that is his only job, he is fighting the war. It is not

his job to conduct boot camp training, that is the service’s job.

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So you have the support function and you have an operational

function. You put all the support function in one place and say you

are the support guy, you work on the preparedness and everything.

And then when the button hits, you have a field general, and that

is the FEMA Director.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Dr. Harrald.

Dr. HARRALD. I agree with most of that and disagree with little.

As academics, we have to pick a little bit of that. I think one of

the misnomers is that FEMA responded to this. The Federal Government responded through the National Response Plan. The primary Federal official, as appointed by Secretary Chertoff, who by

the National Response Plan is the incident manager, he quite correctly appointed the Director of FEMA. And the primary Federal

official is now the Chief of Staff of the Coast Guard. It is not a

FEMA response, it is a national response.

So the question, as I was saying, there are two systemic issues

in there. One that was mentioned in the prior panel, which is you

have created these response positions in the National Response

Plan, what competencies do you expect to have to fill them.

And I was part of the review process for the National Response

Plan when this was being put together. I ran the State and local

groups and a lot feedback from State and local groups that when

bad things happen there is the black hole of communications. We

know this happens. And what has to happen is the creativity, the

adaptability on the response. And so I have this fear that we have

this as the water was rising from the south, the bureaucracy was

descending from the north.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. That is a double whammy.

Dr. HARRALD. When they meet, you really want a creative aspect.

Now on as far as the organization within, I do not quite agree

on the separation of the preparedness. Because one of the things

we are losing in what is done is the integration on natural disaster

massive events of mitigation, vulnerability reduction, response and

recovery and the tradeoffs that involves. I know there is concern

within FEMA, there is concern of people who work the mitigation

programs, who work for the States and cities that the preparedness

becomes terrorism preparedness and we lose the focus on mitigation.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Let me just ask one other question. Nationalizing the National Guard, what is the protocol on that? Do

you need the permission of the Governor in a case? Can a President come in? What is generally the protocol on that? Because one

of the problems in New Orleans that I think the world was shocked

at is looking there and just seeing anarchy there in an American

city.

Dr. CARAFANO. The National Guard can operate in one of three

modes. It can operate under State control, then it can do anything

the Governor wants within the laws and the constitution of the

State.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. That is normal.

Dr. CARAFANO. Then it can operate under a Title 32 status,

which means that the Federal Government writes a check but they

are still under the control of the State and they are not subject to

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posse comitatus. Or they can operate under Title 10 status in

which they are Federal troops and they respond to the President.

One of the things I would hate to see lost is that system, because

what that system gives you is enormous flexibility in how you can

have the National Guard respond to many, many different situations. That is one of the great virtues and strengths. And I know

John would agree with me on this, if you have seen one disaster,

you have seen one disaster. No two disasters are ever going to be

exactly alike. And if we plan to do the next Katrina perfectly, we

will fail.

You want to have that flexibility of Federal or State control always to have the options. The genius is in the leadership, to pick

the right mix. It is like the guy in Mission Impossible at the beginning of the show when he would go through the cards and pick out

exactly the right people for the mission. The genius is to pick the

right command and control structure to fit the crisis, not to try to

codify in law a very rigid decisionmaking thing that you have to

do this or have to do that.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. But looking back at New Orleans and seeing the anarchy, how did that happen? What should have happened?

Dr. CARAFANO. Again, I think the failure there is the 72-hour

gap. Nobody expects people to roll in in under 72 hours, particularly where you have wiped out the infrastructure and everything

else.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. The place is flooded, 80 percent under

water.

Dr. CARAFANO. Right. I think the issue really here is the structure of the National Guard, that it is not structured to do these

missions. I have always recommended that we ought to build a National Guard structure that could respond to the catastrophic disasters which only the Federal Government can do, and that one-fifth

of that force would always be on active duty and working for

NorthCom 24/7/365 and on strip alert like the 82nd Airborne. Because that is the only way you are going to amass that amount of

resources and get it into a disaster in under 24 hours.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. And I just would say I think one of the

most shocking things, and there were a lot of them that came out

of this, was just seeing the helicopters coming in, help coming in

and having citizens fire on these people. We went back and resorted to the state of nature almost.

Dr. HARRALD. I think the sequence of events of, one, not evacuating New Orleans and having 150,000 or more people there, then

what is the impact of that on the decisions of people outside. And

I think we were continuing on with our plan without the new information.

That afternoon before the levees broke and after the storm had

gone through, we were working closely with the Red Cross and I

was in the Red Cross Disaster Operations Center when the report

was received that the levees had not failed yet, etc., and Joe Becker, who is the vice president for Disaster Services, who has been

to many disasters and has been a local chapter manager, leaned

forward, and the picture of the hurricane was still on the screen

up there, and he said to everybody, just kind of kicking back a litVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:50 Jan 18, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00237 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24205.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tle bit, and said, ‘‘Look, because we have not heard anything does

not mean good things, it means bad things, No. 1. No. 2, look at

the size of that storm, calculate the number of people underneath

that footprint, and be prepared to deal with the worst thing we

have ever dealt with.’’ And at that point in time, for his position,

I think that is what you want to see. I do not think that happened

in the State. I do not think that same thought process happened

within the deployed FEMA region. Most people were kicking back

and waiting for the information to come to them.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Interesting. Good point.

Yes, Dr. Carafano.

Dr. CARAFANO. If I could just go back to the National Guard. The

other key point there I think is that when you get to the catastrophic, no State is ever going to have within its own National

Guard the resources it needs to respond. They all have different

kinds of units. For example, the major unit in Louisiana was an

armor brigade. If it had been home, it would not have been much

help because it had all the wrong kinds of equipment.

And that the other problem is that they are in the State, they

are in the target area, so they might well be either victims, their

equipment could be destroyed, or the infrastructure could limit

their ability to respond. So when you have a national response, you

are going to need the ‘‘National’’ Guard to respond, not the individual State Guards.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. And they were not prepared to do that.

Nobody was prepared.

Dr. CARAFANO. We are prepared to do that. We always do that.

If you look at these disasters, the Guard always draws on units

from around the country and sometimes they draw on Federal

forces. But the point is we always do it in this kind of very methodical, slow, deliberate way. We do not drop in the 82nd Airborne in

the first 18 hours.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you. Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I would like to followup on your line of questioning because seeing such havoc and catastrophe, by some reports it took the Guard 3 days, other reports

4 days to appear. In September 11th, both the Governor and the

President called up the National Guard. They were, by some reports, the first people to get to September 11th following police and

fire and they stayed there literally for months.

So my question to Dr. Harrald, and I think it is a question we

on this committee need to look at, is when was the National Guard

called up? Why did it take them so long to respond to this tragedy?

Dr. Harrald, there were a lot of reports on television that it was

a Category 4 hurricane. For days they were saying to evacuate,

evacuate, everyone must leave.

Are you aware of any realistic plan that was put in place to help

those residents evacuate who did not have their own car? You saw

hundreds, thousands of people who were not able to leave. Their

response was, ‘‘There was no way for us to leave. We did not have

a car. We did not have a bus. We had no transportation.’’

It appears to me, with a Category 4 hurricane coming, you would

be thinking about how to send in some type of force to help the

poor, to help the sick, the frail, the residents who were in hospitals,

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of babies who died in incubators. You were telling the world this

is a Category 4, yet it appears from watching this that no plans

were put in place to help the frail, the elderly, the babies, the sick,

the poor leave the catastrophic area. Were you aware of any effort

in that area?

Dr. HARRALD. Well, yes. By coincidence, we are working as a

partner with the Hazard Center at the University of New Orleans.

Professor Laska, who you can go on the Web and get. She has

worked the simulations and the predictions of this event. Her home

and her university are now flooded out. So that is one of the ironies

of working on this.

One of the things that she was working on and seeking money

to do, in fact we were partnering to work with this, and I was just

talking to Barbara Childs-Pair, the director of emergency management for the District, my comment that I made earlier that preparing the government is not preparing the community and the ability

to communicate with the community—people did not leave because

they did not hear, they did not believe, they could not, they did not

trust.

But they are there and we knew they were going to be there.

Professor Laska was working with the city government of New Orleans to develop the plans, different than preparation, there were

plans, there were concepts, there were ideas, but nothing——

Mrs. MALONEY. There were plans, but were there buses sent in

to take the sick out of the hospital, to take the poor out of the nursing homes, to take the frail and elderly that were stuck there?

Moving to another point, and it appears there were plans but no

one implemented those plans, is what I am reading.

Dr. HARRALD. Preparation is not planning, that is right.

Mrs. MALONEY. Since I would say 2002, there have been reports

of FEMA employees with considerable expertise and experience

being replaced with politically connected novices and contractors.

We read in the paper today that Michael Brown, even though he

was invited to testify before us, according to one paper is at a spa,

and Joe Albaugh, his predecessor, was the chief of the campaign

for election of President Bush.

Do you agree with these reports that FEMA has been losing its

talent and experience to political appointees? And do you believe

there should be a requirement that the Director of FEMA have

some experience in managing disasters, have experience in management and types of plans and being prepared?

And I want to give this question that has really galled me. All

these reports are coming out that everybody is so surprised, ‘‘Oh,

I am shocked, absolutely shocked that the levees broke in New Orleans and that there was a flood.’’ Yet there were many, many reports of a Category 4 hurricane. I just want to know, should people,

Federal officials, or political, or professionals, or whatever, been

surprised that the levees breached as a result of a Category 4 hurricane hitting New Orleans?

Dr. HARRALD. Given the situation of the water in Lake Pontchartrain and the rain, no, I think this was certainly a scenario.

And the Army Corps of Engineers was very well aware, so again,

it is the Federal family, so that if the Corps knew then FEMA

knew.

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But to your earlier set of questions, I will try to leap in and answer the pieces of it that I can. As I said earlier, these are important jobs, both the political appointed jobs and the career civil service jobs. These are the people that we are trusting to lead our Nation’s response to catastrophic events. They are no less important

than military jobs.

My background, it may be in my resume, I am a retired Coast

Guard Captain and I spent 26 years in the Coast Guard. To see

that we expect leaders in some positions to have extensive experience and leaders in similarly complex positions not mystifies me.

FEMA has had, as all agencies do, but FEMA particularly, and

some of this is just timing, retirements and people leaving. It has

been pointed out that Bruce Baughman, who was the Director of

Operations for FEMA for many years, left FEMA and became the

chief emergency manager for Alabama where he has been very successful. Charlie Hess, who replaced him, left to work in Iraq.

And so a number of very key people have left over the last couple

of years and there has been an experience drain. Whose responsibility is it to monitor that? Whose responsibility is it to ensure

that we have the leadership capacity to deal with these events I

think is a legitimate question.

Mrs. MALONEY. FEMA used to be a cabinet level position. Yet

under the reorganization with Homeland Security, it has now become a sub-department. It used to be independent, it is no longer

independent. So, Dr. Harrald, do you believe that FEMA has lost

some of its focus on natural disaster preparedness and response

after it was absorbed into the Department of Homeland Security?

Dr. HARRALD. I think as a Nation we have lost the focus on natural disaster preparedness, mitigation, and response. We respond as

a people to the last problem, and, as you are very well aware, the

last problem was September 11th and the Congress and the administrative part of the Federal Government has put that as a priority.

I think there is a tradeoff. FEMA as an independent agency is

a very small agency. That access depends on the administration. It

has gone through a history of being very effective, very ineffective

in cycles. I think, as Dr. Carafano says, there is at least the potential of strengthening and networking within the Department of

Homeland Security. But the thing that is missing is really the ability to focus these efforts in a catastrophic situation.

Mrs. MALONEY. My time is up. But from your testimony it seems

clear that the flooding threat to New Orleans was well known, predicted that the levees would break with a Category 4.

Dr. HARRALD. Dr. Laska and I participated in a briefing with

Senate and House aides last June. We did a briefing on the simulations up here on the Hill.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much. Mr. Shays.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. Both of you are outstanding witnesses.

Dr. Carafano, nice to see you for the second time this week. I mean

no offense by this, but there is a saying that someone said to me

one time, they said, ‘‘You may not be right, but you are never in

doubt.’’ [Laughter.]

You are the most confident person when you say all that you say,

and I find I agree with 90 percent of it. But I am surprised that

my colleague from New York, who I work so closely with, talks

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about failures but it is always the Federal Government. It is not

true that about 90 percent of the first responders are State and

local? Are they not the ones who have the first response, and are

they not about 90 percent of the response? And then does not the

Federal Government step in to provide financial assistance?

Dr. CARAFANO. Well, that is true. FEMA basically writes checks

and lets contracts. They do not show up with a lot of material support.

Mr. SHAYS. Do they command an army?

Dr. CARAFANO. No.

Mr. SHAYS. Do they control the National Guard?

Dr. CARAFANO. No. I think the best way to answer this question

is I think the one greatest mistake that we could make is to compare September 11th to Katrina. In September 11th, at least Rudy

Giuliani had a pile to stand on.

Mr. SHAYS. And I would like to point out that Joe Albaugh was

the head of FEMA at the time, who happened to be the former

Chief of Staff of the President, and he did a heck of a good job. So

with all due respect, he was there, give him some credit.

Dr. CARAFANO. In September 11th, you had intact infrastructure,

you had a very small geographic area, you had a mayor who could

easily command and control the city, he could turn to major cities

around and draw all kinds of assets. So, in a sense, it was the perfect storm for the kind of a disaster like that.

Katrina is totally different. State and local capacity is almost

wiped out. So now you are looking at a different set of core competencies for State and local leaders. In a normal catastrophe, the

core competency in State and local leaders is to use the resources

at hand effectively, organize them, do a methodical assessment,

and then turn to the Federal Government and say this is what I

need.

In a catastrophic disaster, State and local leaders have to go in

and establish ad hoc command and control, do some kind of rapid

assessment, and then somehow try to work with the Federal people

to get in resources in a very, very quick way. And again I will go

back to my basic point, our National Response System is not designed to get massive amounts of national aid in, whether Federal

or from other States, in that very few hours.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. Dr. Harrald.

Dr. HARRALD. In a sense, the primary Federal official, which in

this case was the Director of FEMA, does command an army under

the National Response Plan. The defense assets, he or she can task

DOD for military assets as determined at the scene.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me be clear on that because that is important to

know. Does he command them, or does he say——

Dr. HARRALD. He tasks them. They will be under the command

of their commander.

Mr. SHAYS. And tasks, meaning what? We need you?

Dr. HARRALD. We need you, we need these assets, we need boats,

we need helicopters, we need whatever. So the determination of

need. One of the things we have done——

Mr. SHAYS. So he determines need.

Dr. HARRALD. He determines need. And the National Response

Plan, the successor to the Federal Response Plan, allows him or

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her to task the appropriate agency, appropriate emergency support

function to get those assets.

I somewhat disagree with Dr. Carafano, because the whole effort

over the last 2 years has been to take the Federal Response Plan,

which was admittedly slow with the 72-hours aspect, and particularly as we get into the catastrophic incident planning, to close that

window. And I think one of the messages of Katrina is we have not

done it.

Mr. SHAYS. Who has the capacity to close that window, that is

what I need to know?

Dr. HARRALD. Well, I think that is a Federal Government responsibility and a State responsibility.

Mr. SHAYS. Within the Federal Government, would that have

been head of DHS?

Dr. HARRALD. Yes. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. Do you want to respond?

Dr. CARAFANO. I think the answer to the question is the National

Guard. Again, I think one of the biggest mistakes we could take

away from this is that to catastrophic response we need to stockpile

lots of stuff all over the country. Because what will happen is the

stuff that is stockpiled, you know, build it up in the State and local

governments, all that will happen is that no matter how much you

buildup, if it is a catastrophic disaster, it might get all destroyed

and you still have to move stuff in. And it is enormously inefficient

to have State and local governments and the private sector stockpile masses of big things for catastrophic disaster.

Mr. SHAYS. I am going to ask you—in my mind, the chairman

can do a crossword puzzle while he is talking with you, I have to

think a little longer. You spoke too quickly when you started running down all the different categories of National Guard. I want to

know, in my simple mind, the National Guard is a militia under

the Governor. The Governor instantly can call in the National

Guard, does not need permission from anybody, just does it. I have

been led to believe that it is possible the President could nationalize the National Guard within a State, but I am not quite sure how

that happens. So walk me through slowly, and I may interrupt you.

Dr. CARAFANO. It has happened before. President Eisenhower, for

example, when the Governor was ordering the troops to keep Black

children out of the school, the President nationalized the National

Guard and said you now work for me, take the children to school.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me ask this question directly. It would be false

to say that the President needed permission from the Governor in

order to empower and command the National Guard to take action?

Dr. CARAFANO. No. I actually think the law is very flexible on

this point. The President does have authority where he can go in

and where he wishes he can usurp the sovereignty of the Governor

and send forces in.

Mr. SHAYS. If any time demanded it, in my judgment, that was

the time.

Dr. CARAFANO. Well, that is the tough question. It is——

Mr. SHAYS. It would not have been tough for me. Because you basically had a Governor saying help, help, help, and a mayor saying

help, help, help. In fact, they were doing more than that. They

were going after the Federal Government for not being there. So

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if I were President, in my own mind I would say, fine, let us do

it.

Dr. CARAFANO. There are two problems with that. One is that to

know that the Governor and mayor have failed may not be immediately apparent and may take days. And if you want to argue the

mayor and Governor failed in this case, go back and look at the

chronology and when were we sure that the mayor and Governor

had failed. And the answer is probably, if you believe that, it is

probably going to be in the 72-hour range. Well, quite frankly, by

that time the Federal stuff is getting there anyway.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Walk me through it. The National Guard, the

Governor can do it right away, the President, on the other end of

the extreme, can nationalize it. So the Governor can empower it as

the Governor, the President can nationalize the National Guard.

What is in between? You gave about four categories of how you do

it. Are those the only two ways?

Dr. CARAFANO. There are three ways. The Governor can do it

under his own authority but he has to pay for it. He can basically

have an agreement with the President to do it, they are still under

his authority but the Federal Government pays for it, which is

Title 32. Or the President can do it under his authority.

Again, I think when the analysis is done we are going to find

who the National Guard was working for to me is not going to be

the crux of the problem. To me, the crux of the problem is going

to be the time-space distance and how quickly we can mobilize and

deploy forces there and get it done. We may find that we may have

lost an hour or a day in making the decision to ask for the forces.

But I still think that we would never have been able to close the

72-hour gap with the National Guard as we have them structured

today because they cannot close the time-space distance.

Mr. SHAYS. I will just say, and I am going to conclude, it would

strike me that as soon as we saw a disaster, as soon as we saw

the incredible flooding, the National Guard in region probably was

in a pretty desperate circumstance, and I would have thought that

we would have been mobilizing the National Guard from around

the country and sending them down. Now I think we had testimony

from the military that they did that among the standing army;

they just did it.

Could I indulge you, Mr. Chairman, one last point?

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Sure.

Mr. SHAYS. Does the President have the capability to send standing army down there under his command?

Dr. CARAFANO. Sure he does. And also it is in the law that local

commanders can respond without any authority whatsoever. I was

at Fort Sill, OK during the Murrah Office bombing and General

Dubia was the Commander at Fort Sill, OK, he had troops on the

road within 30 minutes.

Mr. SHAYS. Standing army, not National Guard?

Dr. CARAFANO. Yes, active duty. And the way the law reads is

if it is imminent threat of loss of life or people are in danger, the

military can just put people on the road and execute and then

worry about the thing later.

Mr. SHAYS. Did you want to make a comment?

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Dr. HARRALD. I think one of the aspects of the National Guard

is recognizing that in each State the relationship between the National Guard and emergency management is slightly different. The

resources that the National Guard have in a State are different

and in many cases they are kind of core function. For example, the

National Guard is the logistics of the emergency manager in North

Carolina. And so stepping in and taking that away could, if a State

was near to failure, you could really push it over the edge by taking control over the National Guard away.

Dr. CARAFANO. Could I just make one quick comment? A resource

that we never talk about, the Constitution authorizes every State

to have guards and militias that are not the National Guard. New

York, for example, has a naval militia which actually did terrific

work on September 11th and was a real lifesaver. Some States

have them, some States do not. Some of them are OK, some of

them are coffee clubs. There is no national standard. And it is another layer of volunteer group and a backup to the National Guard

that might be useful. The National Guard in the past has not liked

them because they do not want to compete for resources.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. Let me just say I find this fascinating

and there is lots to be looked at. Both of you were excellent witnesses. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much. Mr. Gutknecht, followed by Mr. Marchant.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will try to be brief.

I just concur with my colleague from Connecticut, your testimony

has been excellent. Dr. Carafano, I really want to reiterate that it

bothers me sometimes when people compare what happened in

September 11th in New York City, where you are essentially talking about an eight square block area, relatively easy to confine,

there was no breakdown in communications or command and control, and at the Pentagon the same circumstance, you are talking

about a relatively small area, as bad as those national catastrophes

were. To compare that to an area that literally has devastated the

size of the State of Wyoming, it just amazes me sometimes that

even the national media gives that credibility. They are two entirely different kinds of things.

I do want to reiterate also, and I do not necessarily have a question so much, that one of my observations is that once the National

Guard and the regular forces were on the ground with adequate

command and control, with the supplies that were needed, it seems

to me things started to get better a lot faster.

And the one thing that I hope will ultimately come out of this—

and I think, Dr. Carafano, you just made the point that there are

differences between the State militias and guards or whatever

terms that they use—but it may well be an obligation of us at the

congressional level and the Federal Government ultimately to put

in place as part of the Guard some kind of emergency response

packages, if you will, pre-positioned around the country that we

can get into some of these places.

Because this will happen again. It may be Louisiana next time,

and it might be Florida next time, it could be North Carolina, we

do not know. But these kinds of things are going to happen and

we have to make certain that we can respond and get the stuff on

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the ground, not in 72 hours necessarily, although in some of these

cases we are talking longer than that.

So I do not have a question. You may want to respond to that.

But again, I think your testimony has been excellent, and we thank

you for coming.

Dr. CARAFANO. I just have two very quick comments. One is, one

of the reasons why we have not better prepared the National

Guard to respond to catastrophic terrorism is that is what a lot of

mayors and Governors did not want and a lot of fire chiefs and police chiefs did not want. They all stood up and said, no, no, we are

the first responders, we need the money, give it to us, if this happens we are going to be the guys, we are going to take care of this.

When you look at the scenarios, you never write a scenario in

which you fail and have to call in the National Guard. And I kept

telling people, I said, look, what is going to happen is that we are

going to get to a scenario like this and we are going to collapse and

they are going to turn around and scream where is the cavalry at,

and they are going to scream that you are not there. That is part

of the reason why we have not moved this forward, because people

have not demanded that we structure the National Guard to do

that.

The other thing I remind people of is if you remember during the

Gulf war when we made the pause in the road to Baghdad and everybody was screaming how come people are not getting MREs and

gas and everything. It is because it was a war zone, and there was

a time-distance problem, and it was destroyed infrastructure, and

there was a lot of confusion. You just cannot magicly make things

appear in there like you beam it down on Star Trek. That is the

exact same problem you had here.

Again, one of the terrible things I hear is, geez, if we had just

turned it over to the military everything would have been solved.

Because they see, like now, the military finally gets there and they

set things up. And I absolutely agree that in a catastrophic disaster

the military in that first 72 hours is the best resource to throw at

the problem.

But if we want to throw the military at the problem in the first

72 hours, we are going to have to structure a National Guard that

can do that. And it is not a trivial problem. The National Guard

we have today cannot do that, just like the Army cannot drive from

Kuwait to Baghdad through a war zone in 20 minutes. The National Guard cannot move halfway across the country and deliver

cases of Avian in 26 hours.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Let me just pursue that because I think that

really is ultimately the task of the Congress to sort this out, who

is responsible for what, and who can do certain functions the best.

And what we do not need is several layers all trying to say that

they can do it and then ultimately finding out that when you have

everybody saying that you can do it, nobody is getting it done. That

is the problem.

And I think this is an issue that we have to spend some time

thinking about, bringing in some outside experts, and really beginning to define in these kinds of circumstances who is going to be

responsible for what and knowing that in advance so that everybody is on the same page.

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Dr. CARAFANO. I just think it is inefficient for anybody other

than the military to buildup a response to catastrophic event because for everybody else it is inefficient for them to hang on to

those massive amounts of resources that may sit around forever

and do nothing. But the thing about the military, whether it is

medical, or security, they can use those for other things. If there

is no catastrophic disaster, there are lots of things we can always

use our military to do with those kinds of resources.

Dr. HARRALD. If I can add. One of the things that will come out

of Katrina is just the matter of scale with it. We were sitting at

the Red Cross yesterday looking the number of shelter days and

meals fed compared to everything else that they have done.

The Coast Guard Air Station, New Orleans, rescued more people

last week than they had done in the entire history of the Air Station, which has been about 60 years. The scale of this is truly beyond the charts. And we have done the planning assumptions and

the issue, but nobody has stepped up and said what resources really do we require if we have a million people we have to feed tomorrow. And I would suggest, yes, the military have the mobility and

agility.

The other alternative is to bring some of that back in to the

emergency management forces and to the non-government agencies. Because the military does not bring in a focus on the customer, a focus on the victim, that is not their job. They can move

resources, they can move people, they can bring things, but that is

not the end game.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Thank you.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you. Mr. Marchant.

Mr. MARCHANT. Yes. My question is, have you both examined the

major disaster and evacuation plans of the top 10 cities in the Nation?

Dr. HARRALD. No. The only evacuation plan I have examined in

general specifically is Washington. We have done some work in San

Francisco. Basically, the issue was not evacuation in that because

you are not going to go anywhere in a major earthquake. And I

have looked at historical evacuations, yes. I have a student doing

that very issue right now.

Dr. CARAFANO. I have not looked at any specific plans. I have

talked to emergency managers in some major cities like Washington, Kansas City, and San Francisco. I have also looked at the historical data, on which there is an enormous amount. This is actually a global competency. Lots of governments evacuate masses of

cities, a lot of them do it a lot more frequently than we do. So there

is actually a lot of data on this issue.

Mr. MARCHANT. Is a key part of any of the plan a gathering

place, such as the Astrodome, that every city has that is at least

a primary or a secondary gathering point?

Dr. CARAFANO. Correct me if I am wrong, John, but I think if you

have seen one mass evacuation plan, you have seen one mass evacuation plan. They are all different.

Dr. HARRALD. Washington, for example, is doing what people in

New Orleans were trying to do as the next step, is more local gathering places where people knew churches, community halls, places

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where people would go locally and resources would come to them.

That seems to be the planning. I think that is the way to go.

Dr. CARAFANO. Could I just make a point. There are three problems I just wanted to highlight in any mass evacuation plan. One

is the send in/send out problem. One of the things New Orleans did

to aid mass evacuation, it is a lesson learned from its first exercise,

is it counterflowed all its roads so that everybody was headed out.

So the problem of why did you not just send in trucks to go get

the other people, well the problem is you were so focused on the

outflow of the traffic, trying to inflow additional resources to evacuate people is more of a problem.

The second one, and this is almost unique to hurricanes, any

time you move masses of people you put them at risk. This is the

reason why in war most of the people who die in war are civilians

and most of them die when they are displaced from their homes

and they die of dehydration, disease, and other things. So the last

thing you ever want to do if you do not have to is take people out

of their environment and make them a refugee. Because you are

always more at risk when you are a refugee.

So it is always a very, very difficult decision whether to move

people or not. The problem with storms always is if they change

the path in the last minute, you might actually be creating victims

by unintentionally moving them into the storm path. So it is always sort of a Hobson’s choice.

And then the other point, that was pointed out in the first panel,

is there is the cry wolf syndrome. People react to risk communications that they believe are understandable, credible, and actionable. So if they understand this is a message meant for me, if it

is credible and they really believe it is something they should do,

and if it is actionable and there is something they can do to make

themselves better, the data tells us they will do that.

The problem with an evacuation order is the understandable part

is no big deal, the actionable part for some people is a big deal, but

the credibility thing, and mayors are always worried about well if

I evacuate and nothing happens, are they going to believe me next

time.

Mr. MARCHANT. The question I have is if the evacuation is ordered and they are given a place to go, and it is known ahead of

time that is the place they are going to be told to go, why there

is not some planning for water, some MREs, and just some rudimentary survival tools that are in place year round for that to take

place? And since September 11th, there have been hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars given out across the country to cities

to first responders, and I think justifiably so.

Mr. Chairman, I think maybe if we had some information about

the major cities in the United States that have received first responder aid and——

Chairman TOM DAVIS. I think that is something we need to compile. Unfortunately, I think you will find some minor cities as well

that have gotten the aid.

Mr. MARCHANT. Yes. And what they did with the money, did it

go all toward terrorism, was it toward this kind of disaster? Thank

you.

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much. Mrs. Maloney, do

you want to do a followup question before we go to markup?

Mrs. MALONEY. Just as a balance here. The gentlemen mentioned the National Response Plan, and you are both familiar with

it, and a key part of that plan is when you make a decision that

it is an incident of national significance which then triggers the

Federal coordination. But it appears that this designation was not

made until 36 hours after Hurricane Katrina struck. This is according to a memo issued by Secretary Chertoff, and I would like to put

this in the record.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Without objection, it will be in the record.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you. I would like to ask Dr. Harrald,

based on your experience, what do you think about this 36-hour

delay?

Dr. HARRALD. Well, unfortunately, history does repeat itself a little bit. I was on Hurricane Andrew, which happened a week after

the Federal Response Plan came out and that was still in shrink

wrap at the time, and an awful lot of State and local and even national officials really did not understand how that worked. The National Contingency Plan arguably failed at the Exxon-Valdez and

was rewritten and revised after.

One of the things we have to look at is systemically did this plan

fail. Was it too centralized? Was it too bureaucratic? As I said, I

worked with the State and local. You are looking at the top, but

look——

Mrs. MALONEY. But my question was about the delay, the 36

hour delay.

Dr. HARRALD. I think people did not understand clearly the significance that designation had on authorities and actions. It was either a miscommunication or a misunderstanding.

Mrs. MALONEY. Should the designation have been on August

27th when the National Hurricane Center predicted the hurricane

and that it would strike——

Dr. HARRALD. When the declaration of emergency was made, it

would have made sense to make that, yes.

Mrs. MALONEY. Now in this memo from Secretary Chertoff, he

designates Michael Brown, the head of FEMA, as the principal

Federal official in charge of the Federal response under the National Response Plan. And if Mr. Brown was not designated as the

principal person in charge until after August 30th, who was in

charge of the Federal response under the National Response Plan

for the 3-days before that?

Dr. HARRALD. The Secretary.

Mrs. MALONEY. So it would have been Secretary Chertoff. Today’s paper has an article in it where they are quoting Mr. Brown.

In it, he describes his frantic calls to the White House asking for

help, saying the locals have been overwhelmed, that we need more

support, we need more help. I would like to place that into the

record, too.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mrs. MALONEY. I guess some of the questions that you really do

not have the answer to is: Why it took them so long to call up the

National Guard? Why they were not aware, even though all the scientists were predicting, the levees would break, that there would

be water, how that did not come into account? And why they did

not evacuate the poor, the sick, the children, the elderly that could

not get out?

Dr. HARRALD. These are the questions I think we will have to

look at. The only thing I can add to that is that the closer you get

to the center of a major incident, the less you know. You know

what you can see at some point. And the situational awareness, the

ability to make the leap that Joe Becker of the Red Cross did, that

this is really big, and I do not know what is going on but it is bigger than anything I know and I have to get everything moving,

that sort of thought process did not happen at a number of levels

of government.

Mrs. MALONEY. Even though CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, all the

cable shows were saying level 4 catastrophic emergency, evacuate,

take care of people. Yet the Federal Government, the local government, the State government was not there.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mrs. Maloney, thank you very much.

Thank you. It has been a long day for you. This has been very,

very helpful. Your testimony is excellent. We appreciate your efforts.

The record remains open for 7 days for Members to put their testimony in the record.

We will now adjourn this hearing.

[Whereupon, at 3:13 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

[The prepared statement of Hon. Candice S. Miller and additional information submitted for the hearing record follow:]

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